


A Cough You Can't Shake

by Emptylester (timelordangel)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Phan - Freeform, Sad, Sickfic, Slow Burn, Smut, current day fic, stand up to cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:21:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8329447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelordangel/pseuds/Emptylester
Summary: The tours are finished and wrapped up into two films and a book, but Dan's re-branding might be something unexpected. As the most eventful year of their lives comes to a close, Dan finds himself with an unexpected diagnosis and a best friend he just can't fathom leaving. 
Note: This is now complete. I deeply appreciate everyone who reads this, and I hope you enjoy!





	1. A Cough You Can't Shake

**Author's Note:**

> https://open.spotify.com/user/aquacas/playlist/4lgHBcbTHLvucBiF2xaNQ1
> 
> This is a playlist I made for this fic, feel free to listen!

Dan doesn’t miss Manchester often. He doesn’t miss it when it’s only a ten minute train to the BBC- he doesn’t miss it when Tesco direct is cheaper and quicker in the city. He definitely doesn’t miss it when he wants to see his Youtuber friends.

But when the first light of morning has barely broken and a sharp whine of a siren pierces the air like an alarm nobody in their right mind would set- he misses Manchester. 

Dan flinches out of sleep as he’s knocked into reality by the deafening ambulance outside his building. Instantly he’s groaning, burying his head in his pillow as he waits for the noise to fade into the distance. By the time it’s dissipated, it’s too late. Dan’s wide-awake and already pissed off. 

He wonders why people can’t refrain from dying at such ungodly hours of the morning.

With resigned acceptance of his fate, Dan shoves back his duvet and slides off his bed. It’s almost eight, he notes as he checks his phone while on the toilet. Today is a day of resting before Phil’s family comes to visit, which is code for “spending all day cleaning”. 

Dan can’t fathom where Phil got the idea to invite his family to their wreck of a flat. It was fine before the tour, before they accumulated everything under the sun and hauled it up four flights of stairs. Now, the knickknacks, suitcases, and memorabilia line the hallways and leak into their rooms and lounge; it’s like an episode of Hoarders but with less cats.

They’d have to find a solution for that some day, but it was unlikely to be solved by ten am tomorrow when the Lesters’ train arrives. 

Dan finds himself in the lounge with a coffee, allowing Phil to take a day off from being the Brew Master of the household. He takes a hesitant sip with a grimace as it scalds his lower lip. He stifles a cough in his sleeve as he wills away the burning. In predictable fashion, not two minutes later he hears Phil awake. 

“Coffee?” Phil rubs at his eyes in the doorway of the lounge, looking like a perfect candidate for The Walking Dead. 

“Yup.” Dan gives him a small smile, holding up his mug. 

Phil disappears to go to the loo and wake up a little more, but returns soon enough with his laptop in one hand and a mug in the other. He plops down beside Dan and shoves his glasses up his face, yawning and scratching at his neck.

“Man, if the Internet could see you now.” Dan laughs, shaking his head. 

He’s met with a hard glare, which just makes Dan laugh more.

Dan puts on the next episode of Stranger Things and they sit in silence until Phil’s mug is empty and his eyes are a little brighter. 

“My parents are coming tomorrow and I literally have no idea what to do with them.” Phil says as he’s nestled in the sofa, his fingers mindlessly resting on his laptop. 

“Yeah, it’s not like we live in one of the most popular cities in the world. Caters more to tourists than locals.” Dan’s focused on the screen; he doesn’t bother to look over at Phil as he speaks.

“You know what I mean.” Phil closes his laptop. “They don’t want to go to tourist traps.”

“Well,” Dan frowns, finally turning towards Phil as he pauses the show. “The British Museum just had renovations, and it’s just dull enough to dissuade tourists for the most part.” 

“Ah,” Phil considers for a second, “Yeah, they’ll like that. And I’ve never been.”

“Me either. Good Londoners we are.”

“The best.” Phil agrees in monotone, returning his attention to his laptop.

As predicted, they spend most of the day cleaning. 

By nightfall Phil’s in a slight panic, still buzzed from the constant caffeine intake and stressed from the imminent arrival of his parents. Dan hears noises from his room and finds Phil trying to shove yet another suitcase into the hall closet.

“It’s not gonna fit.” Dan says softly, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. 

Phil stops shoving but doesn’t take his hands off the suitcase; he turns his body towards Dan and gives a small whine.

“You can put it in my room.” Dan offers, falling for the look of manic exhaustion written on Phil’s face. 

“I’ll just,” Phil sighs, giving up and taking the bag back down, “put it in the office. Or something. I kind of miss that room being storage.”

“Our gaming channel fears for its life.” Dan shakes his head.

The Lesters arrive the next morning earlier than expected; it’s nine in the morning and they’re going a hundred miles an hour. Dan feels bad for Phil, notoriously not a morning person, who is using all his effort to act cheerful. 

“Dan! So good to see you again, sorry you couldn’t make it last time!” Catherine coos, dragging Dan into her arms, “Phil said you just about drowned in work that weekend.” 

That hadn’t been the truth. Yes, Dan had gotten a lot of work done, but honestly the two had decided that a break from each other before the Australian tour would be a good idea. And it had been- except for the Skype calls Dan couldn’t make it the whole three days without. 

“It was rough, but you’ll see the outcome very soon! Lots of work for a lot of content.” Dan smiles as he embraces Phil’s mum.

“Oh my boys,” She continues, freeing an arm to drag Phil in as well, “I’m so proud.”

“Let them go, Catherine.” Phil’s dad huffs affectionately, slapping Phil on the back. 

She releases them both and Dan’s flushed, running a finger through his fringe to sort it out.

“So, what are the plans for today?” His dad asks as they sit around the table in the lounge waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Well,” Phil begins, glancing at Dan, “We thought we might take you to the British Museum. They just did renovations.”

“I went there before I met your father, it was fun! Sounds like a good plan.” Catherine agrees. “Why don’t you give us half an hour to freshen up and then we’ll go?” 

They take Phil’s room, as planned, and Phil drags his pillow and a blanket to the office. While his parents are getting ready, Phil is in Dan’s room watching him try to sort out a scarf.

“Is it too pretentious, or just the right amount?” Dan frowns into his mirror, a cough punctuating his words. 

“What do you mean by right amount?” Phil is upside down on Dan’s bed, looking at his phone. 

“I mean, kind of an ironic amount. Like, you’re taking the piss out of yourself because you’re being pretentious so it’s okay, you know?” Dan explains, pulling on a coat. 

“I guess.” Phil shrugs.

Dan coughs again and Phil makes a joking face of disgust, rolling off the bed and holding up his hands. 

“Don’t get me sick again!” Phil yelps.

“We literally never- cough- leave the fucking hou- cough- fuck,” Dan can’t get his sentence out as he coughs repeatedly. 

Phil’s face of joking turns to concern, “Don’t die.”

“I’m fine, just swallowed wrong.” Dan clears his throat.

“PHIL!” His mum yells unnecessarily, considering they’re a room away. “WE’RE READY!”

Phil and Dan share a look they can only describe as “today will be long” and head out the door. 

The museum is really cool, but Dan finds himself frowning at the mummies. 

“You scared?” Phil teases, jabbing a finger at Dan’s shoulder.

“No, not of the mummies. I might be afraid of the ruthless conquering Britain’s done.” Dan crosses his arms. “Are your parents having fun?”

“Yeah, they like it. More fascinated by historical rulers than the dead though.” Phil glances around to add emphasis that he has no clue where his parents are.

Dan coughs again, and his throat aches. “I think I’m sick.”

“Yeah, you’ve had that cough ages. These mummies are going to catch your twenty first century illness.” Phil goes for levity. 

“Fortunately for them, it can’t kill them again.” Dan laughs, but it dissolves into another coughing fit. An older couple nearby shoots him a look, like it’s under his control.

“Can’t kill you either, doesn’t mean you should be spreading it around the world.” Phil says, “Why don’t you get it checked out?”

“Okay Dr. Lester, I’m fine.” Dan rolls his eyes, “Come on, let’s go look at the dinosaurs.”

“What are we, six?” Phil laughs.

“Precisely.” Dan answers, already headed towards the exhibit. 

After they exhaust the museum and all of its questionable morality woven into the history of their great empire, they take Mr. and Mrs. Lester out for lunch at a café. 

Dan really wants to sit outside and enjoy one of the last days of semi-warmth in the country, but he and Phil both know that isn’t the best idea. While they do love their fans, getting stopped every five minutes during a meal is not one of their favourite things. So they settle into an indoor booth, with him and Phil on one side and Phil’s parents on the other. 

He thinks for a second that anyone would probably assume they’re brothers or lovers if they were to look at this scene from the outside, and the older they get the more likely strangers are to assume the latter. It doesn’t bother Dan; on the contrary sometimes it gives him a calming reassurance that they fit together well. 

Dan doesn’t really crave romance; he doesn’t feel the ticking time bomb of his biological clock that drives most people to settle down. He desires domestic stability and someone he can tell everything- and Phil happens to fit the bill for this well. Besides, he has plenty of time to fall in love with someone and have 2.5 kids, he argues to himself. 

“What are you thinking about?” Phil nudges him and asks under his breath.

Dan snaps out of his head and looks down at the grilled chicken salad he ordered but hasn’t touched. “Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.” Phil says again, and Dan catches the dip of inflection that borders on concern.

“I’m fine, I’m just tired. Zoning out.” Dan lies, but not really. He’s exhausted, and he suddenly can’t remember the last time he wasn’t. It’s barely one in the afternoon and he’s ready to climb into bed and pass the fuck out. 

“You were up early, did you sleep?” Phil asks with half a mouthful of sandwich. 

Dan wishes Phil would stop worrying about him. It’s exhausting on both of their parts and Dan just wants to tattoo “I’m fine” on his forehead so he doesn’t have to look at those giant blue eyes and repeat himself for the tenth time.

“Yes,” Dan punctuates the word to get Phil to stop, “A siren woke me up. I don’t know how you slept through it.”

“Phil was always able to sleep through anything.” Catherine chimes in, and Dan realizes that they’ve been listening to their conversation.

“You’re telling me.” Dan grins, mostly forced.

They order pudding at Phil’s dad’s request and share it with four forks. It’s a thick chocolate cake with icing in the middle as well as the top. Dan coughs into his sleeve before giving it a rough stare.

“It’s huge.” Dan laughs, not wanting to take the first bite before their guests.

Phil laughs as well and digs in, unabashed. He brings the fork to his mouth before he jokingly offers it to Dan and makes eye contact while mimicking the part in their stage show where he feeds Dan the cake.

His parents look confused.

“It’s from the show.” Phil shrugs before eating the bite.

“You two spend a lot of time together.” His dad says softly and it comes out a bit accusing. Dan wonders if Phil hears the meaning behind the inflection too.

The rest of the day includes a crowded train home, board games, and wine and ends with the Lesters minus Phil going to bed and shutting Phil’s door behind them. Dan can’t help but think it looks odd to see his door closed- when they’re home alone both doors stay open.

“I like having them here.” Phil says as he yawns on the couch.

“Me too, they’re fun.” Dan agrees, but there’s a weight in his stomach.

“Thanks for hanging out with us, I know they’re not your family.” Phil smiles, a little tipsy on the wine.

“They might as well be.” Dan grins, “Friend in-laws.”

“You’re supposed to hate your in-laws.” Phil frowns at the carpet.

“Then they should stop being so lovely.” Dan shrugs, the grin still on his face. 

“They love you, you know. Think of you like their son.” Phil sits up suddenly and gets very serious.

“I-“ Dan pauses, unsure what to say, “I love them too. Of course I do, you guys are my family.”

Phil stares for a second too long before clearing his throat. “Right. Just so you know.”

“Lay off the wine, Phil. We have two more days of entertaining to do.” Dan musses Phil’s hair and pushes himself off the couch. “I think I’m going to bed.”

“Early for you.” Phil hums. 

“Early to bed early to rise, makes a Dan healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Dan winks, smiling at his own joke.

“Shut up.” Phil groans, throwing a couch pillow at him.

“Have fun on the sofa bed!” Dan sing-songs, retreating to his room.

It’s about half an hour later when Dan’s door opens and Phil slips in, clutching his pillow. 

“Phil?” Dan murmurs, rolling over to look towards the door.

“It’s not comfy.” Phil says as he approaches the opposite side of the bed, “Can I stay here?”

“Of course.” Dan swallows hard, fully aware of how he is only wearing boxers and Phil is fully clothed, “I’m going to put on a shirt.”

“You don’t have to.” Phil climbs under the duvet and Dan’s half asleep brain is left in silence to wonder what that’s supposed to mean. “Goodnight.”

“Did you shut the door?” Dan worries, unable to tell in the darkness. The last thing he’d want is Phil’s parents finding them like this.

“Yeah.” Phil answers.

Just like that, Phil is asleep.

Dan feels quite bad, as he has to cough every time he’s on the verge of sleep and it shakes him back awake. His eyes flicker to Phil every time, hoping not to wake him as well. It’s almost two when Dan coughs so hard he gets out of bed to go into the hall, only to have Phil’s hand reach out and grab at his arm. 

“Go to the doctor tomorrow, please.” Phil mumbles, his eyes still shut. 

“Yeah,” Dan collapses back onto the bed, his voice hoarse. “Okay.”


	2. On The Verge of Sleep

Dan wakes up with two things he hasn’t had since 2010: morning wood and Phil wrapped around him. 

His head swims in confusion until he blinks a few times into the sunlight streaming in through the windows and orients himself. Phil’s a cuddly sleeper; they’ve both known that since day one. It’s not his fault that he subconsciously decided to spoon Dan.

And it’s most certainly not Dan’s fault that his body subconsciously decided it wanted to fuck something. He groans internally and starts trying to remove himself from Phil without waking Phil up. 

Luckily, Phil sleeps through just about anything. Dan manages to untangle himself and pulls on a shirt before heading to the bathroom, only to run into Mrs. Lester in the kitchen. 

“Dan, good morning.” She gives a friendly smile, already dressed and showered. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, please.” Dan smiles sleepily, “How did you sleep?” 

“Well, thank you.” She hums as she leans against the counter and stirs her coffee, “I don’t think Phil is awake yet, I haven’t heard a peep from upstairs.”

She glances up at the office door at the same time Dan glances towards his bedroom door and they both make eye contact afterwards. It’s silent until Dan realizes it’s his time to respond. 

“Oh, yeah. Right. He’s still asleep.” Dan nods, “Sorry, I’m still asleep as well.”

Catherine laughs and hands him a mug of coffee, “I understand, it’s early.”

“What time is your train tomorrow?” Dan asks as they stand side by side leaning against the counter.

“Ten fifteen in the morning. Trying to get rid of us already?” She smiles but her voice holds certain sincerity.

“Of course not, I was hoping you’d be able to stay longer.” Dan leans against her shoulder. “Phil’s really happy you are here. So am I.”

He doesn’t tell her that she feels more like his mum than his real mum, or that he is thankful for every decision she made that led up to Phil meeting him. But in the quiet morning light drenching the kitchen, she understands. And when Phil emerges disheveled from Dan’s bedroom instead of the office, she doesn’t say a word.

Dan knows she has the wrong idea, she has for years, but he’s too tired to explain. 

It’s easier to sip his coffee and watch the Lester family interact, following the three of them to the lounge once the kitchen becomes too crowded for the group. They talk about the weddings of Phil’s university friends and about their friend’s children who have recently had babies. Dan notices the way Phil takes more frequent sips of coffee and nervously taps his feet beneath him. 

Maybe his parents aren’t dropping hints, but it sure seems that way. 

Phil’s almost thirty, maybe a solid third of the way done with his life, and while he’s got a hefty portfolio of his accomplishments, he’s got a bare ring finger and no offspring to speak of. Despite the book, stage show, and career, he feels like he’s disappointed his parents. 

Phil tells him this, not for the first time, as they cook together- making Panini’s for lunch. Louise had gotten them a Panini press as a joint Christmas gift last year and it had rarely been pulled from the cupboard. Phil figured it might be good for impressing parents.

“It’s not like you’re forty. Plenty of people aren’t settled down by thirty.” Dan argues, eating the cheese they’re supposed to use for the sandwiches. 

“They just want grand kids before they die. Maybe make sure I’ve got someone to take care of me.” Phil shakes his head, punctuating his thoughts with a sigh.

“I’ll take care of you, and Martyn and Cornelia want kids, surely they’ll get hitched soon?” 

“I think it mostly bothers them that I don’t seem to care.” Phil shrugs.

“Do you care?” Dan says after a pause, running his hands under the tap. 

“I don’t know.” Phil admits as the press beeps to signal it’s at the proper temperature. He opens it and places the bread horizontally. “I think right now I’m married to my career, you know?”

“I do know; we live the same life. Be careful, you’ll burn yourself.” Dan taps Phil on the shoulder before clearing his throat. It turns into a hoarse cough and Dan grimaces as he goes to re-wash his hands.

“Do you?” Phil asks as he waits for the food to cook.

“Do I what?”

“Do you care about settling down? I’ve only got four years on you.” Phil explains. Sometimes Dan forgets that they’re not the same age; forgets they’re not the same person born twice. 

“Sincerely?” Dan raises his eyebrows and shoves himself onto the counter, “I feel like I already have.”

Phil laughs, his tongue flickering to the edge of his mouth briefly before he shakes his head and begins making another sandwich with no response. 

“Dan, is that you coughing?” Catherine shows up at the door of the kitchen and Dan pulls away from his elbow, not even aware he was coughing again.

“Always, mum. He’s had that cough forever.” Phil shoots Dan a look as if maybe his mum shouting at Dan to go to the doctor will stick better. 

“It sounds bad, sounds like pneumonia.” She coos, frowning.

“I had pneumonia before the tour and no medicine worked. It’s probably back.” Dan groans, hopping off the counter to wash his hands for the third time. “I’m going to watch game shows with you guys, I shouldn’t be in the kitchen. You got this, Phil?”

“Yeah, I’ll scream if I burn myself.” Phil nods, taking out the second successful sandwich. Dan’s secretly impressed by the ease in which he does it.

“You best not burn yourself.” His mum tuts before she and Dan go into the lounge, leaving Phil alone in the kitchen. 

Thankfully, it’s free of casualties. 

It’s nice, eating dinner as a family. Dan is thankful when they keep the conversation to memories Phil’s recounted to Dan or ones Dan has actually been around for. It feels like coming home and it feels safe, even for Dan.

It doesn’t feel like coming home when Dan swallows a bite “wrong” and starts coughing again. It doesn’t feel safe at all when he excuses himself to the toilet and coughs so hard he ends up vomiting. It’s the worst, however, when he vomits again and there’s blood dripping from his mouth, black and thick. 

“Phil!” He shouts from the bathroom door, up the stairs. The kind of intuition everyone has when something is sincerely wrong floods through him. For a second he can’t breathe, not until Phil shows up at the top of the stairs. 

“What?” Phil’s eyebrows are furrowed. 

“I, uh,” Dan laughs, the sound hysterical but soft, “I just threw up. Blood.”

“What?!” Phil suddenly rushes down the stairs, his vision focusing on Dan’s pale face in the florescent light of the bathroom. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”

“I’ll I’ve eaten today is coffee and half a Panini. It was black and looked like sludge.” Dan points at the toilet and Phil flinches. 

“Okay, maybe you’ve just irritated your throat and blood is dripping back down.” Phil shrugs, looking at Dan like he’s trying to diagnose him by his pupils. “How do you feel now?”

“Fine, I guess.” Dan says.

“What do you want me to do?” Phil asks. 

“Nothing, I just panicked.” Dan still feels panicky, but when the feeling of sick and pain had receded, so had his anxiety.

“Back to lunch, then?” Phil smiles, as if nothing had happened.

Dan figures that’s part of the reason why they work so well together. Dan stresses out, and Phil calms him down. Phil cares too little; Dan cares too much. Together they form an emotionally healthy human being. But right now it irritates Dan.

Phil’s too mechanical sometimes. If there’s anything wrong, he tries to solve it; if there’s nothing to solve there’s not a problem. If there’s nothing to solve and nothing he can do about it, he doesn’t spend any time focusing on it. 

Which is probably extremely healthy, but it’s nothing like Dan. 

They go back to eating and don’t mention anything to Phil’s parents. They play board games and Dan passes on hot chocolate, and they don’t mention what happened again. 

When they go to bed and Phil skips the formality of even trying to deal with the office, sliding in beside Dan like it’s his own bed, they don’t talk about it. They discuss ordering their groceries tomorrow, maybe visiting Manchester together soon, and debate about whether or not artists as people should be separated from their work on a moral standpoint. But they don’t talk about what happened.

“I mean, Tom Milsom was an amazing song writer and artist, but he’s a shit. Can you still like his music?” Dan asks into the darkness, lying beside Phil.

“No, because that’s supporting him. You can separate yourself from what you create, it’s a part of you.” Phil argues.

“But you can objectively say that his music is good?” Dan scoffs, “You’re contradicting what you said earlier. Either the music is good or it’s tainted because the person is a fuck.”

“No, I’m saying you can say the music is good, but if you listen to it you’re supporting a bad person, so you shouldn’t.” 

“Boys,” Phil’s mum says from outside the door, “These walls are paper thin, would you mind keeping your voices down?” 

They both burst into laughter at this, feeling like brothers forced to share a bed at Christmas and being told off by their mum. They both manage “sorry!” through the fits of laughter. 

Long after it’s stopped being funny Dan is still coughing, sitting up on the bed and clutching his chest. 

“You okay?” Phil sits up and moves closer to Dan, putting a hand on his back. 

“Yeah.” Dan coughs once more before stopping. “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow.”

“Good.” Phil says firmly. 

They stay sitting up against the headboard for a bit, Phil’s arm behind Dan’s back. It stops feeling like they’re brothers now; it starts feeling like something much different. It’s too intimate and suddenly Dan’s skin feels like it’s on fire.

“Sleep?” Dan says, breaking the fragile tension. 

“Yeah.” Phil clears his throat, pulling his arm back. 

They don’t talk more; they just lie and listen to the sounds of London around them. Wailing sirens fade into noisy street fights and at one point, there is a dog. Dan turns his head towards Phil at the barking only to find his friend asleep on the pillow, his features relaxed and lacking the stress that seemed to make a home in the hollows of his cheekbones during the tours.

Without thinking about it, Dan reaches out a hand and fixes Phil’s fringe before rolling over and closing his eyes. 

With the metallic taste of blood lingering in the back of his mouth, he falls asleep.

Shortly before Phil’s parents depart for the train station the next morning Phil finds himself saying bye to Dan as well, who is off to see the doctor. Phil decides to see his parents off instead of accompanying Dan, which is fine by Dan.

“I’m ready to pitch a fight, Phil. If he can’t drug me enough to get rid of this cough I’m suing him.” Dan jokes as he pulls on his coat. 

“Me too. I could barely sleep last night.” Phil shakes his head as he nurses his cup of coffee, still in pajamas. 

“Shut up, you slept like a baby with a snoring issue.” 

“I don’t snore!” Phil snaps, giggling. 

“Yeah and I’m perfectly healthy.” Dan rolls his eyes, “Okay, I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Bye!” Phil shouts as Dan closes the front door and braves the new coldness that is the first proper autumn weather in London. 

The doctor’s office is flooded with a million people who have caught an autumn cold and decided they have cancer. Dan thinks about how the common cold is a marketable illness that could be cured, but drug companies want to profit from it. 

He thinks the whole health care system is pretty fucked, actually. He might make a video of that one day, he considers. 

When he’s finally checked in for his appointment and a nurse takes his blood pressure, heart rate, and a few other things, he sits back on the bed and waits for the doctor. 

He thinks about the films coming out on Wednesday, and then he thinks back to the tour bus in America. The memories are compartmentalized in the documentary, as well as in the photo book, but a few memories are quietly resting in the back of his mind. He remembers the night before they filmed the waking up scene on the bus. 

It was one in the morning and things were starting to get a little blurry around the edges. Outside the tour bus the world flickered by in a dark blur; street signs reflected headlights briefly before they blended into the unforgiving black of the trees surrounding the interstate once more. 

Dan sat on the sofa in the tiny lounge of the tour bus watching the microwave flicker “Press start” in blocky red lettering. The, then familiar, rumble of the tour bus that usually put him straight to sleep, became yet another distraction in his restless mind. 

He was exhausted. Even now, months after the tour, Dan remembers that exhaustion; it was the kind that never left his bones.

Dan felt like a cell phone that had only been charged off portable battery packs for a month and a half. He desperately wanted to be plugged into a wall for a solid twenty-four hours, to reboot his system- clear his head. His brain throbbed behind his temples and he gripped his phone tighter in his right hand, all of his friends back home asleep at six in the morning.

Less than ten feet away Phil was asleep in the back room; a luxury compared to the tiny bunks in the hallway. Despite the proximity Dan wasn’t allowed to join Phil that night because there were going to be cameras on them in the morning and they wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. 

And it would be the wrong idea, Dan remembers thinking as he finally gave in and went to bed, because best friends can share beds but if they do it they’re something more. Everyone already has the wrong idea anyhow.

As he stares at the speckled black and white ceiling of the doctor’s office, he thinks about how he spent an hour staring at the dark mahogany three inches above his face and wondering when the hell he’d be back home in his real bed. It took all of twenty minutes for him to quell the anxiety rising in his chest and slide from bed again, his socked feet hitting the wooden floor with a slight “oomph”. 

He paced.

Walking on the bus was disorienting enough, but repeatedly walking one, two, three, four, five, steps and then turning on his heels and walking back one, two, three, four, five steps made his head spin more and he ended up sitting on the sofa again with his head between his legs.

He went to talk to the bus driver, but Franklin was listening to a book on tape and Dan decided to leave him alone. 

With every ounce of patience gone, he pushed open Phil’s bedroom door and felt instantly better as his eyes met Phil’s.

“You’re up, too.” Phil had smiled softly. 

“I couldn’t sleep.” Dan had laughed, making some offhand comment about his height in correlation to the bunks.

Phil had welcomed him with open arms and they’d ended up the way they had every previous night: inches apart and on the verge of sleep.

“I set an alarm for six am, I’ll move then.” Dan murmured, his eyes falling shut. 

“Um, maybe we should just let them find us like this.” Phil had teased, only to be met with a light kick to the shin.

“Next documentary.” Dan responded, but he couldn’t hide the sleepy smile that crept onto his face. 

“One is enough, let’s get clones to do it next time.” Phil yawned as if to punctate his sentence and pulled the scratchy blanket over the both of them. 

Dan hummed his agreement and focused his attention on the rumble of the asphalt beneath them and the beating of Phil’s heart inches from his ear. 

Just like that, they fell asleep. 

When six am had arrived, Dan sadly dragged himself from Phil’s arms to the cramped bunk and waited for Phil to cue him to fall out of bed, which required no acting. 

It’s a small price to pay for privacy, he figured. Even if there was nothing to hide.

He sighs at the memory as he checks the time, nerves gathering in his stomach as he waits for the doctor to show up. Sometimes it hits him like a train exactly how much they’re done together; the reality of their successes is overwhelming. 

He’s so proud of them, and this documentary would be celebrating that. Everything they’ve made together, everything they’ve done and experienced, and everything they are when they’re right beside each other living their lives. 

He laughs at himself for being so cheesy right as the doctor walks in. 

Fuck. 

He tries to play off the laugh like a cough, which turns into a real coughing fit, which Dan is desperately trying to stop as the doctor watches him patiently.

“Hi.” Dan finally breathes, his face flushed. 

“Hello, Mr. Howell. Good to see you again.” Dr. Warren gives him a tentative smile, “Still got that cough, I see.”

“Yep, that’s why I’m here.” 

“I’m going to listen to your lungs, if you wouldn’t mind taking your shirt off.” 

It’s cold. That’s Dan’s first thought as the stethoscope is pressed against his shoulder blade. It reminds him of the microphones dropped down the backs of their shirts before shows. The cold hands of the mic. techs.

“Breathe in.” Dr. Warren instructs, and Dan complies. 

Dan isn’t worried when he’s asked to take four deep breaths. 

He gets a little worried on the fifteenth breath he takes with the (no longer cold) device against his back.

“Is something wrong?” Dan asks after the silence starts to get to him.

“You have a bit of fluid in your lungs.” The doctor says matter-of-factly as she rolls away on her chair and types something into the computer.

“Uh.” Dan presses his lips together. “Okay.”

“I believe you have pneumonia again, Dan.” She frowns and looks at Dan’s chart on the screen. 

“My body is failing me.” Dan forces a laugh.

“How has your breathing been besides the coughing?” Dr. Warren asks, “Have you been finding yourself short of breath, having trouble catching your breath?”

Dan wants to respond sarcastically with “always”, but he thinks for a second and remembers being out of breath at the top of the stairs to their apartment, which is rare. And when he jogged to catch a train for ten seconds the other day, he had spent ten minutes recovering. 

“Actually yeah, both.” He admits.

“How’s your appetite been?” 

“Okay, I guess.” Dan had eaten half of his Panini yesterday, and he hadn’t wanted anything else. And this morning he had forgotten to eat, but his stomach hadn’t reminded him. “Maybe not great.”

“And your sleeping?” 

“Fine. I think, it’s never been great.” Dan feels slightly dizzy even now, hyper-focused on his bodily functions.

“Dan, I feel like I should warn you of something,” Dr. Warren takes off her glasses and Dan feels a bit sick to his stomach, “low appetite, poor sleep, a reoccurring infection such as pneumonia… this could all be caused by cancer cells in your body. I don’t want to scare you; these things all have a million other causes. But I don’t want it to come as a surprise to you if things are more serious.”

“Oh.” Is all Dan can say, but he’s pretty sure he’s about to be sick on the floor. He wishes Phil had come after all, his bones aching for something familiar to latch on to.

“It’s just a possibility. I wouldn’t recommend worrying about it. We’re going to take blood work and I want you to keep me updated on your symptoms, and get this prescription filled as soon as possible.” She says as she writes it out and hands it over.

“Okay.” Dan’s voice is trembling. 

“If you start throwing up blood or there is blood in your bowel movements, call as soon as possible, okay?”

“I-“ Dan has a violent flashback to last night when he was throwing up blood, “Okay. I will.”

They take blood, x-rays of his chest, and listen to his lungs some more. When all is said and done, they release him into the world and he practically bolts home, his hands shaking as he catches his breath and unlocks the door.

“Phil?” He shouts the second he’s inside, only to be met with an empty house.

He curses and sits down on the couch, pressing his sleeve to his mouth and forcing himself to take even breaths. They said they would call with the blood results by tomorrow, and then they’d know. He should get this prescription filled. 

Within twenty-four hours.

He texts Phil.

/Where are you?/

/headed home, you back?/ Phil’s reply is instantaneous. 

/yep. see you soon./

When Phil gets back, Dan tells him what happened. They sit on the couch in their normal places and stare at a black TV screen, not speaking.

“You’re probably fine.” Phil shrugs.

“I have, like every single symptom.” Dan coughs.

“Even if you do have it, it’s got to be early. You’ll be fine.” Phil insists, putting a hand over Dan’s hand. 

“Loads of people recover, right?” Dan whispers, “I might not even have it.”

“You probably don’t have it.” Phil agrees.

They don’t say the word cancer.

They eat dinner and play Mario cart and yell and laugh until it’s late enough that the neighbours might give them a stern knock on the wall if they continue. 

Phil ends up winning and he throws his arms in the air, yanking the controller out of the wii. “WOOOO!” 

“Shut up.” Dan pouts, “It’s a stupid track anyway.”

“Sore loser.” Phil laughs, giving Dan a playful shove. They catch eye contact and hold it for slightly longer than normal. Dan feels something tug at his chest and he has to drag his eyes away.

“I’ve literally been up since seven, I’m going to bed.” Dan stretches his arms above his head, ignoring the tight sensation in his chest.

“You feeling okay?” Phil just about whispers, and they both go silent.

Dan clears his throat and crosses his arms, not moving from the sofa bed. “I’m okay. My throat hurts.”

“You’ll be okay.” Phil answers the silent plea for reassurance. “No matter what, we just have to deal with what happens, okay? I’m here for you.”

“I know your parents are gone, but could you sleep with me again?” Dan asks as his voice catches. He hates this, he hates being soft and vulnerable and weak. 

“Of course.” Phil agrees instantly, shutting off the TV. “I’m ready for bed as well.”

Dan goes to shower before bed and he fights with his thoughts in the hot spray of the showerhead, the pressure never great on the fourth floor of the building. It’s a steamy tomb by the time he feels like he’s about to suffocate in his mind.

He stares at himself naked in the bathroom mirror for a while when he’s done. He takes a picture on his phone with just a towel wrapped around his waist partially as a joke and mostly because he wants to preserve the person looking back in the mirror at him. 

He doesn’t think he looks any different; his cheeks have colour and he doesn’t look like he’s lost weight. He repeats these things as he towels off and slips on pajamas, he repeats these things as he climbs into Phil’s bed and they turn on F.R.I.E.N.D.S. to watch as they fall asleep. 

He repeats these things as he tries to forget what he learned today.


	3. One out of Every Two

His phone rings at eighty thirty the next morning and Phil wakes up to it buzzing under him where it was left on the bed last night. He looks at it with wide eyes and a sinking feeling in his chest and he locks the phone, silencing the call. 

He won’t wake Dan up just to find out that he’s sick. He’s probably really sick. Phil lies back down and stares at the boy across from him, peaceful in sleep. 

Something tugs in his heart as he watches Dan sleep, something he’d subconsciously repressed since the day they met. Everything seems blindingly irrelevant in the soft morning light stripped vertically over Dan’s bare back. 

Dan’s phone lights up with a voicemail and Phil desperately wants to know what the doctor’s office had to say, if Dan is going to be okay or not. Stop it, he argues with himself; of course Dan will be okay. Of course. 

Unfortunately, Dan wakes up.

He rolls over on his slide sleepily and yawns, smiling at Phil. “Hey you.”

“Hi.” Phil says, and his tone gives him away. 

Dan doesn’t have to say a thing; he reads Phil like a book and looks down, finding his phone instantly and unlocking it with shaky hands. He clicks on the voicemail and takes a breath, feeling dizzy from how quickly he went from waking up to being terrified. 

“Should I listen to it?” Dan asks, closing his eyes and taking a shallow breath.

“Of course.” Phil sits up, pressing his back against the headboard. 

“I’m going to listen to it alone, if you don’t mind.” Dan swallows, standing from the bed and leaving, the door to his room shutting a minute after.

Phil’s alone on his bed and he tries to eavesdrop, but he hears nothing. 

It’s fifteen minutes before there’s a soft knock at Phil’s door and Dan walks in, quiet.

“Is it?” Is all Phil says from the bed before Dan starts crying and climbs on the duvet, falling into Phil’s arms, nodding.

It’s all they say for the next hour and a half as Phil just holds Dan and lets the man sob into his t-shirt. It’s not pretty, it’s the kind of crying that dissolves Dan into mucus and slobber and coughing. 

“You’ll be okay.” Phil finally says as Dan’s sobbing drops off into him just staring at the wall blankly.

“I’m dying, Phil.” Dan laughs. It holds no humour. Nothing feels real.

“Not really. What is it, exactly?” Phil braves.

“Lung cancer, most likely. Stage three or four, they don’t know yet.” Dan breathes out, feeling like it’s someone else saying these words for him. “I need more tests done.”

“You’ve never so much as touched a cigarette.” Phil shakes his head, trying to process the information.

“My entire immediate family besides my little brother does, though. And.” Dan’s voice catches and he stops speaking, tears burning behind his eyes.

“Look.” Phil tucks his hand under Dan’s jaw and moves it to face him better, “So you’ve got cancer. A million people do. A bunch of them survive. You’re going to be okay.”

Dan’s eyes flicker to the wall behind Phil and then back to the blue eyes staring at him before taking a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Good. Now, what do we do from here?” Phil asks, his voice softer.

“I suppose you want breakfast.”

“No, I mean about you getting better. What’s next?” 

Dan hesitates before answering, “They asked if I could come in today at ten for tests and treatment options.”

“And you said?” Phil prompts.

“It was a voicemail, I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t call them back.” 

“I reckon you better do that, then.” Phil slides off his bed, stretching. “It’s fifteen after, if we need to be there in forty-five minutes I need to shower.”

“Okay.” Dan whispers, staring at the bed sheets.

“Put on clothes, Dan. Call them back. It’s going to be okay.” Phil’s parting words as he heads to the shower resonate through Dan as he lies back down on the familiar blue and green duvet. 

Dan runs a hand over his stomach, feeling his sharp hipbones stretching the skin on his hips. He’s pale, and small, but tall and firm in ways others aren’t. He looks at the back of his left hand, and then his right. He surveys the veins on his arms and hands and wonders if they know they’re filled with stupid corrupt cells. He breathes in and watches his chest fill with air and then deflate; he ignores the sharp pain when he coughs at the end. He does it again and again until he can’t remember how to breathe without noticing it, until he can’t stop thinking that one day soon his lungs might be completely useless.

He looks over his body and wonders how long he’ll stay full of life, wonders how long he will stay strong and happy and Dan. 

Tears threaten at his eyes until he pulls himself from the bed and puts on real clothes, all black. Mourning his shot at a happy, carefree life. 

They’re silent on the way to the doctor’s office. They’re silent in the waiting room, but Phil holds Dan’s hand.

“Howell?” The receptionist calls out, causing fear to jolt down Dan’s spine.

Dan stands and Phil follows suit, trailing Dan until he gets to the door. 

“Do you want me to come?” Phil whispers, despite the fact that the nurse is standing a foot away. Dan nods and they’re led to the tiny room covered in random clouds and rainbow decals. 

“Why does it look like a room from the pediatric ward?” Phil pokes fun to lighten the tension.

“I suppose it’s to make people feel better about being here.” Dan muses, looking around and admiring the rainbows. 

“Is it working?” Phil asks.

“They aren’t, but you are.” Dan gives Phil a soft smile.

There’s something between them at times like this that Dan can’t place. It’s soft and light and it has the ability to make any situation better, even when it seems impossible. 

“This is kind of bad timing.” Phil says lightly, “The tatinof films are coming out Wednesday.” 

“We’ve got three days. I should be fine by then.” Dan’s shooting for levity here and Phil doesn’t question it.

“We can post the teaser videos tonight. Then we need to email Mary about if we have the final copies or if they fixed the crediting issue.” Phil sips hastily back into Work Mode, as he always does when he’s stressed. Dan wants to laugh at the irrelevance of it all as they sit in the doctor’s office waiting to be told his death sentence.

“Dan, stop.” Phil gives his best persuasive face as he looks up from his email on his phone, “You’re overthinking things. You’ll be fine.”

Dan curses silently in his head at how well Phil knows him. 

Dan learns three fundamental things in the following hour and a half.

1\. He has stage four lung cancer, and two tumours behind his lungs.   
2\. His insurance will cover chemo for fourteen months  
3\. The life expectancy of stage four lung cancer diagnosed between the ages of 23-30 is eight months.

Phil hears these things and gathers them strategically in his mind, putting facts and figures into lists and memos in his mind. 

Dan hears these things and turns off.

Dr. Warren refers him to a pulmonologist in London and gives him a stack of reference pages. It’s a lot, and it all happens very quickly. When he’s been given permission to go home, armed with a stack of pamphlets and two new prescriptions, he pauses to ask one last question.

“What’s going to happen next?” He barely manages to speak, the words tumbling out of his mouth and getting caught on all the hinges of his throat. 

“Set up an appointment with Dr. Carter and you’ll start treatment either this week or next.” Dr. Warren says with wide, sad eyes Dan’s sure she uses only for these situations. 

“No, I meant,” Dan frowns, forcing the words out, “to me. What will happen to me, next?”

“Well.” Dr. Warren pauses, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, “It’s hard to say. Most likely your cough will worsen and your appetite will disappear. It is crucial that you remain eating, Mr. Howell.” She shoots a look at Phil.

“Okay.” Dan nods, solemn.

“The most daunting symptoms will come from the chemotherapy treatment, but ultimately you’ll find your breathing… restricted.” She hesitates and takes a breath, like her own lungs are checking to make sure they still work. 

“Okay. Thank you.” Dan says, and just like that he and Phil are on the tube home and they’re out in public expecting to act like they didn’t just have a metric ton of bricks dumped on them. 

Dan wants Phil to get off the train and then he wants it to crash and kill him, so he doesn’t have to deal with any of this. Right now he could skip to the chase, cut a long story short. The train doesn’t crash and he doesn’t die, and he has to deal with the fact that his body is going to slowly kill him over the next eight months. 

Phil’s talking, low and serious in his ear. “She said 12 months of chemo would leave you cancer free. It’s just a year, Dan. You can do this.” 

“Did you notice,” Dan muses, his voice numb and void of emotion, “She said a year of chemo… but only eight months life expectancy.” 

“You’re stronger than most.” Phil sounds too serious, too exact. Dan wants to shave the sharp edges off this Phil and he wants to laugh with him at the man in the corner with half a hamburger in his mouth, fast asleep. 

“I’m not.” Dan laughs, humourless and cold.

Phil doesn’t respond, he just leans against the wall of the train and closes his eyes, leaving a hand on Dan to make sure he doesn’t dissolve into the nasty floor of the carriage. He keeps his long, pale fingers tangled in Dan’s t-shirt and Dan ignores the way his heart aches, even now, even at the beginning of this storm. 

Dan closes his eyes and joins Phil in the world he knows he’s escaped to; they’re both lost in a world where this isn’t reality. Where they’re not famous and they haven’t made a documentary about a sold out tour in America, where they’re not lovers to friends to something in between, where a cough is just a fucking cough and not this. Not cancer. 

Dan doesn’t notice the tears streaming down his face until they leave the station and the cold wind burns the saltwater on his face.   
_____________  
On Tuesday Dan doesn’t remember it’s Tuesday until he checks Twitter and people are talking about a live show. It’s been four days since his diagnosis and he welcomes the distraction with open arms, violently denying Phil’s suggestion to skip it this week.

“The films are coming out tomorrow, we need to get people excited.” Dan takes another sip of Ribena. 

“Are you excited?” Phil glances up from his laptop.

“Of course. More like nerve-cited. You know? I’m nervous to put this thing that’s been our entire lives on the Internet, but I’m excited to see peoples’ reactions.” 

“I get that. We’re doing a viewing party with the crew Sunday, maybe we could do a joint liveshow with our subscribers Saturday.” Phil suggests. 

“I dunno,” Dan hums, “Watching us watch the films for two hours would be boring, even if they say they’d like it.” 

“That’s true. And it could lag and suddenly everyone’s off.” Phil shakes his head, “Maybe we could double dose it and do a live tweet party when we’re doing the cast and crew thing, you know?”

Dan hums in a way Phil knows means he’ll think about it, and probably agree. “What do you want to do for dinner?” 

“Take away, take away, take away,” Dan chants, laughing. 

“Lazy bones, I’ve cooked you dinner every night since my parents left.” Phil rolls his eyes, “When is it your turn to play housewife?” 

“But you’re the best wife.” Dan whines.

“If we get take away you’re paying for it.” Phil feigns annoyance, shutting his laptop for emphasis. 

“Come on, I have cancer, give me some slack.” Dan’s words come out like a joke but suddenly the normal tone of banter is gone and the tension floods back into the room like a tide. 

“Okay, we’ll get take away.” Phil says after a moment, voice quiet once again. 

Dan wants to correct him, say that no, he was joking; he’ll get up and go make them dinner right now. He’s fine, he feels fine, and dinner will be fine. 

But he doesn’t. Because, to be honest, his body is tired and he feels a bit dizzy. Even after a day of nothing, he barely had enough energy to argue the dinner plans. 

“Woo!” Dan gives a forced sound of delight, to try and break the tension. 

It doesn’t really work. 

When Phil leaves to go to the post office and then to pick up dinner, Dan does his liveshow and forgets he’s alone in the house until an hour passes much too quickly and suddenly he’s surrounded by quiet. 

On a whim, he opens a new tab on his laptop.

Dan takes a deep breath, and rests his fingers on the keyboard of his MacBook. He’s silent for a solid ten seconds before he begins typing. 

It’s something people do, making bucket lists. Lists to complete before you kick the bucket. A to-do-before-you-die list. Most of the time they’re for shits and giggles and exist to be forgotten, or maybe slowly accomplished as you age. 

This time, it’s a list written to be completed in eight months. Eight months.

Dan feels his throat threaten to close around him and he coughs; it’s harsh and wet. He tries to focus, grounding himself in the screen in front of him. He decides to ignore the things he’s never done as he’s been almost everywhere and the remaining would just be too complicated or impractical. Instead, he focuses on what he’s already done that he wants to experience one last time.

1\. Have sex with a girl  
2\. Have sex with a guy 

Dan almost laughs. He thinks for another second and writes

3\. Go back to Japan   
4\. See Muse live

He quickly Googles if they have any tour dates in the next eight months and frowns when they don’t. 

“Fuck.” Dan mumbles, backspacing. He changes four to “See DAPGO published”.

5\. Get really drunk  
6\. Re-watch Food Wars   
7\. Gatorland 

Accepting your own death is rather draining. 

He desperately wishes he could forget his diagnosis and he could spend even a few more hours without his morality resting on his shoulders, but as the days pass he finds himself accepting his fate more and more.

Phil finally arrives home with the food and Dan uses the food as an excuse to save the list for later.

“Hey you.” Dan enters the kitchen where Phil is grabbing silver wear. 

“Hey.” Phil says back with the slightest hint of a smile. “You feeling alright?”

Dan notices how tired Phil looks in the florescent light of the kitchen. At this rate he’s mildly convinced that Phil is worse for the wear than he is. There are deep bags etched in the pale skin of Phil’s cheeks and his eyes are cloudy beneath smudged glasses; he’s wearing a wrinkled shirt he hasn’t changed in at least a day and a half. 

“I’m fine, are you?”

“Yeah.” Phil says, spooning out rice into separate bowls.

“Did you get the sesame chicken?” Dan peers into the bags. 

“No, I got you steamed tofu and veggies.” 

“What?” Dan almost laughs, “You’re joking.”

“Sugar feeds cancer.” Phil deadpans, like he’s spent the past three nights researching this shit. Oh wait.

“I see you’ve, uh, read the pamphlets.” Dan says, taking the tofu out of the bag. 

“I see you haven’t.” Phil retorts.

“I will. It’s just a lot.” Dan makes a feeble excuse, feeling self-conscious and guilty, disappointing Phil is something he always tries to avoid.

Phil doesn’t respond as he takes the plates to the lounge. He looks so tired.

They eat in near-silence, until Phil speaks.

“What did you do while I was gone?” 

“I, uh, just browsed. After the liveshow I tidied a bit.” Dan says over a mouthful of tofu. 

“Your appointment is at eight tomorrow. Want me to come?” Phil’s barely picking at his food.

“If you want, might be a bit boring.” Dan desperately wants Phil to come.

“I’ll come.” 

“Okay.”

Silence falls over the two of them and Dan wants to scream. Mostly because this bland tofu and vegetable meal is a joke, but also because it’s not supposed to be this way. Phil’s supposed to be bubbly and full of light, a child at heart. They’re supposed to be fighting with their chop sticks because Phil can’t figure it out and they’re supposed to be having a heated debate over which season of American Horror Story is the best.

They should definitely not be sitting in tense silence because Dan is dying, and oh yeah Dan is dying, and your appointment is at eight o’clock tomorrow did I mention you’re dying?

“Want to invite Peej and Sophie over for board games?” Dan blurts out.

“Sure, but we have to be up early.” Phil shrugs.

“I know, Phil. I know we have to be up early because I have to go get medicine pumped into me because I’m dying. I know, it’s okay. Let’s just forget about it for a little while, yeah?” 

“You’re not dying. You’re sick.” Is all Phil says, his voice small and soft as if it’s a gentle reminder to himself and not for Dan at all. 

“Yeah, right.” Dan bites his lip, “I made a list today.”

“A list?” Phil looks up, his head at a slight tilt.

“A bucket list. Stuff I want to do before the end.” Dan shrugs like it’s nothing.

“Can I see it?” 

“When it’s done. It’s still a work in progress.” 

“Do I get to mooch off the cool things?” Phil smiles, briefly. 

“Wouldn’t want to do them alone, and you’re my only friend.” Dan smirks.

“Damn straight.” Phil smiles properly and Dan feels lighter.  
In a darkening world, he feels lighter.


	4. Gently, Gently

Dan doesn’t sleep well. Phil’s dead asleep in his own bed while Dan paces in his bedroom, his fingers tangled in the long strands of hair on his head. He can’t stop touching his hair, clutching at it for dear life. He pauses in front of his giant mirror and a low whine escapes his throat as he pushes his fringe back.

They had called the pulmonologist and scheduled a chemotherapy treatment the day after Dan was diagnosed, and Wednesday had been the only day this week available. 

The same day the films are released. Today, essentially, as it’s 4:15 in the morning on the fifth of October.

Dan takes a steadying breath as he flops down on his bed, breathing in the familiarity of their laundry detergent. Today. First chemo treatment, and he’d be home by noon. Home in time to have three hours to prepare for the documentary and TATINOF release. 

He wishes Phil were awake to tell him that he’s being dramatic. Tell him that he’ll be fine. They can’t do surgery on the tumours because they’re too invasive, but he’ll be fine. 

Dan sinks to the floor and waits for eight am to arrive so he can get this over with.

The sun begins her ascent into the sky as Dan and Phil lock their door behind them, dressed in coats and scarves in the chilly morning air. They’re quiet, gently taking in the hustle of workers making their way to their work places and coffee shops. It’s busy, but quiet, no sirens disrupting the early morning air.

Even the trains are on time as Phil helps guide Dan to the new medical centre. It’s a small building across town, a branch off a nearby proper hospital. It deals primarily with lung disorders, Dan reads on a pamphlet as they sit in the waiting room together. 

“Howell?” A woman calls, the third time in a week Dan’s heard his name called in a waiting room. Everything here smells of disinfectant. 

“Hi.” Dan stands, Phil following suit.

“Hello, Mr. Howell. Unfortunately only family or significant others are allowed past this point.” She turns to Phil, who opens his mouth to apologize.

“He’s my boyfriend.” Dan says before Phil can get a word out.

“Oh, my apologies. Right this way.” She smiles, leading them into the long hallways towards the treatment rooms.

Phil gives Dan a look behind her back, which sinks Dan’s stomach farther down into his intestines, but Dan just shakes his head and mouths “I don’t want to be alone”. 

The treatment room is a large rectangular room they reach after a few turns down a long hallway. It’s got three hospital beds against one wall and equipment along another. 

“This is room B, it’s where you’ll always go for treatment.” The woman explains, walking over to the middle bed and unfolding the blanket placed on top. “Today this will be your bed, and the nurse will be right with you.”

They thank her and then she is gone, leaving them along with the one other person in the room, the old lady in the bed to Dan’s left. 

“Hello, I’m Rose.” She smiles, the lines on her face deep and pulling at her cheeks. 

“Hi.” Dan sits on the bed, “I’m Dan.” 

“I’m Phil.” Phil helpfully chimes in.

“Cancer got you, too?” Rose asks with a Northern inflection, closing her eyes as she leans back. Dan notices an IV on her hand and his begin to shake.

“Yeah.” Dan coughs.

“Don’t worry, you’re so young. Mine’s a death sentence, about.” She laughs, and Dan has no Earthly idea why, but she does.

He doesn’t respond as he shares a look with Phil. As if by impulse, Phil reaches out and takes Dan’s hand in his, squeezing once.

“Sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” Rose laughs again, opening her eyes. “You’ll get used to it. We all use humour to cope around here, it’s just a part of it. Good on you for coming with him today, my husband is five years passed but he’s still with me every single appointment.” She looks at Phil.

“We’re not together.” Phil corrects softly.

“You don’t need to lie to me, I’m supportive of all love.” Rose coughs, and Dan flinches at the ragged sound it makes.

“No, we’re best friends. We lied so he could come in here with me.” Dan squeezes Phil’s hand again and ignores the way he never wants to let go.

“I was best friends with Peter for all thirty five years of our marriage.” 

“We’re,” Phil pauses, “Just. Best friends.” 

“Could have fooled me. Still, though, good for you for coming.” Rose says with an air of finality, her energy fading with every breath. “I’m tired now.”

“It’s nice to meet you, thank you.” Dan says, the thank you slipping out before Dan really registers what he’s thanking her for. She distracted him from thinking about the poison about to be pumped into his body and for that he was thankful. 

There are no seats in the room so Phil climbs onto Dan’s bed and holds his hand until Dr. Carter walks in. 

“Dan. Nice to meet you in person.” She reaches out a hand and Dan shakes it, nudging Phil to get off the bed. “Good morning, Rose.” She nods towards the woman beside him.

Phil takes the hint and stands, backing away from the two. 

“Hi, I’m Doctor Carter, and you are?” She instead turns towards Phil.

“Phil Lester. I’m Dan’s… boyfriend.” Phil remembers, and adds a small smile at how easily the word rolls off his tongue. 

“Nice to meet you both. Are you ready to kick cancer’s ass, Dan?” She turns back towards Dan only to be met with tears running down Dan’s face.

“Sorry,” Dan chokes, “I’m fine. It’s just anxiety, I hate needles.” And cancer, he adds in his mind.

“You’re fine, they’re small butterfly needles so you won’t feel a thing.” She talks Dan through the rest of the process, and once he’s hooked up to the IV she tells him it’ll be an hour before he’s done and leaves him alone. 

Phil hesitates by the bed before Dan rolls his head over and gives him a look. “Come on then, sit down.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to.” Phil admits before sitting down and pressing their legs together. 

“Always.” Dan murmurs, his eyes falling shut.

“Is there a sedative in the medicine?” Phil asks, his eyes flickering between sleeping Rose and eyes-shut Dan.

“No, I just didn’t sleep last night.” 

“At all?” Phil worries.

“Nope. Just paced. Freaked out.” Dan laughs.

“You could have joined me in my bed.” Phil urges, taking Dan’s hand back in his own.

“I didn’t want to bother you.” Dan’s head falls and rests on Phil’s shoulder. Their hands still intertwined.

“You never bother me. It bothers me that you didn’t sleep though.” 

“Are you kidding?” Dan scoffs, picking up his head, “This whole thing is a bother. I’m inconveniencing you by existing. You had to wake up at seven!” 

“You didn’t even ask me to be here, I chose this.” Phil reminds him.

“I told you I didn’t want to be alone.” Dan rolls his eyes. “My arm is numb.”

“Numb? Is that a bad thing?” Phil’s eyebrows concave and he looks over at Dan’s left arm as if he will be able to see the numbness. 

“I don’t know. Maybe we should call someone.” 

“Numbness is normal, sweet heart.” Rose pipes up from where they thought she was asleep. “And you two seem very happy together. Don’t lie to an old woman.”

Phil opens his mouth and then lets it fall shut again. 

There were bigger issues here. And they were very happy together, after all. Even if it wasn't in the way people expected.

“Are you in pain?” Phil asks, softly. His voice goes private, and Rose respects this.

“Not really. Everything either feels numb or just uncomfortable.” Dan shifts, “Can we not focus on that, though?” 

“Sure.” Phil runs his hand along Dan’s arm, “The films come out today. Can you believe it?”

“It’s surreal.” 

“I’m so tired.” Dan says suddenly, “Let’s take a nap when we get home.”

“We?” Phil smiles, “I think I’m pretty awake, but I’ll keep you company.”

Dan just smiles, pressing his lips to Phil’s shoulder. 

They’re on their way home before Dan knows it, and Phil gives him the last seat on the train home.

“I can stand, you sit.” Dan fights it, swaying slightly on his feet. He looks ridiculously pale in the dull train lighting.

“No, Dan.” Phil takes Dan’s bag off his shoulder, “Sit.”

“Fuck you, we can both stand if you’re so insistent.” Dan glares.

A couple of passengers give them looks.

“Why don’t you want to accept my help?” Phil lowers his voice to a dangerous level.

“I will if I need it, but I’m fine. I’m so fine right now.” Dan closes his eyes.

“Why are you closing your eyes?” 

“To keep from being sick.” Dan answers.

“Jesus, Dan. You’re not fine. Sit down.” Phil urges, and for the sake of the train floor Dan finally accepts, sitting down and putting his head between his knees. 

“Fuck.” Dan mumbles; his words lost in the rumble of the train. 

Phil’s words resonate through him: You’re not fine. You’re not fine. You’re not fine. They match the clink clink clink of the train flying over the tracks. They match the pounding of his heart in his chest.

As Phil drags him off the train, dizzy and nauseous, they match every step he takes, staggered and painful.

“Dan. Dan.” 

Dan registers that Phil is speaking to him but he’s sitting on a bench in the tube station trying not to be sick and he can’t respond right now.

“Dan, are you okay?” Phil asks for the third time in… Dan has no idea how long he’s been sitting here.

“Yes.” Dan spits out, glaring up at Phil.

His eyes meet Phil’s and he feels guilty instantly.

“I’m sorry.” Dan tries again.

“Shh,” Phil rubs his back, “No worries. Just take some deep breaths.”

Dan knows he didn’t mean that to be a jab at his condition but it reminds him that he can’t really take deep breaths now, or maybe ever again, and a sob escapes his chest.

“Dan.” Phil’s voice breaks as Dan starts crying. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay.”

“You don’t k-know that.” Dan coughs, and then coughs again. He’s crying and coughing and pushing Phil away as Phil tries to touch him and help some way, any way. “Just go home, Phil! I’m fine.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Go!” Dan screams, his voice hoarse and raspy. “Please. Don't look at me like this.”

Phil does leave. He leaves Dan’s bag and walks off, Dan doesn’t bother to look up and see his face as he leaves.

Once Phil is gone, Dan cries for another five minutes, and coughs for ten more. And when there’s nothing left to do, he throws up in the bin beside him and then slings his bag over his shoulder. With a face fit for battle, he exits the station.

Phil is, of course, waiting outside.

“Feel better?” He says cheerfully when Dan says nothing.

“Can we forget that happened?” Dan groans.

“What happened?” Phil winks, giving Dan a little shove.

Phil is thankful for the small smile that grows on Dan’s face. In pleasant silence, they walk home.

So the first day of chemo was rough, but he doesn’t have to go back until Saturday and there are more important things to focus on here- like the fact the TATINOF film and documentary are coming out in seven hours.

“SEVEN HOURS!” Phil shouts from the kitchen as the oven flicks over to the time. 

“SEVEN HOURS!” Dan echoes from the lounge. 

They’re not actually uploading the films themselves, which is odd, but Youtube has magical powers to make sure everything goes according to plan and Dan and Phil have shitty internet and a tendency to run late.

So Youtube is handling this one.

“Do you want to watch them tonight?” Phil asks.

“Sure, we haven’t seen the finished products in so long.” Dan sips at the sugar-free milk-free tea Phil insisted he drink.

“I know, it’s going to be insane.” Phil grins, sipping at his coffee.

Dan wishes his drink was coffee, because he’s being swallowed by the sofa crease and digested into unconsciousness. The next time Phil speaks, it shakes Dan from the verge of sleep.

“Mm?” Dan hums, his eyes still closed.

“I said, do you want to take a nap?” Phil laughs, his voice sounding far off.

“Mmmmmm.” Dan nods, tucking himself back into the couch.

A millisecond before Dan slips under, he feels the comforting weight of a blanket placed over him and a soft press of lips to his forehead. He isn’t sure if it is reality or a dream, and before he can decide the world darkens farther and unconsciousness takes hold.

“Dan.” Phil says, seconds later. 

Dan groans, just wanting to be asleep. “What?”

“I can’t let you sleep any more. Less than two hours.” Phil turns on the lights in the lounge and Dan groans again.

“What?”

“An hour and a half until the films! You’ve been asleep for five hours.” Phil gives him a little shove from beside him on the sofa.

“Five hours? I just.” Dan rubs at his head, no longer feeling dizzy. “Oh. It’s five thirty.”

“Mega nap, I’d say. Your tea is cold.” 

“No shit.” Dan takes a sip anyway, his mouth dry and cotton-y. “Yuck.”

“So. You know how we don’t have to do anything, YouTube is handling the uploading?” Phil asks, grinning.

“Yeah?” Dan frowns, suspicious and still barely awake.

“Want to do out to dinner? We can tweet at the right time and then put our phones down and celebrate with sushi. Or whatever you want.”

“Sure.” Dan nods, ignoring the way his body is begging him to sleep more. “Sounds fun.”

“Cool.” Phil smiles, surprised at the easy acceptance. 

So they go out to dinner. It’s not the Sky Bar in Manchester, but it’s fancy and beautiful and Dan has to force himself to take more than two bites of his volcano roll.

“Fighting with your moral conscious, begging you to go vegan again?” Phil quips over his three orders of maki.

“Yeah.” Dan lies, feeling sick to his stomach again.

“You okay?” Phil asks more seriously, setting down his fork.

“Yeah! Yeah. Just not much appetite, it’s good though.” Dan forces a smile and tries to take in the dully-lit atmosphere of the restaurant. 

“Okay. So, the viewing party is Sunday, but we have a few days where we can get away with no content, what should we do?” Phil stuffs another piece of sushi in his mouth and looks over the table at Dan with wide, expecting eyes.

“Well.” Dan pauses, considering, “We could get started on my list.”

“Your list? Oh, right. Sure!” Phil swallows, nodding, “What’s first?”

“The first and the second are not dinner table appropriate,” Dan grins, “but the third is go back to Japan.”

“Of course it is. I don’t think we can do that before Sunday.” Phil frowns, “What’s the fourth?”

“See DAPGO published.” Dan laughs out loud, reading the list off his phone, “This is the worst bucket list.”

“Okay, well that’ll happen, but not this week. What’s the fifth?” 

“Get really drunk.” Dan deadpans. 

“Finally, one we can accomplish.” Phil grins, taking the drink menu from the end of the table. “Let me guess, you want a Vodka Collins?” 

“And you want a chocolate martini.” Dan shakes his head, “Might want to order a couple shots for each of us as well.”

“Tequila?” 

“Do you even need to ask?” 

They dissolve into laughter as their server appears and Phil places both orders. In no time at all, all six drinks arrive and the sever doesn’t give them a second glance as he sets them down and retreats.

“Shots first?” Dan suggests, to which Phil nods.

They giggle as they down the first round, and Phil grimaces hard against the back of his hand. A salt imprint is left between his fingers and he wipes it on his napkin.

“Nasty.” Phil grunts, sticking out his tongue. 

Dan calmly sets the shot glass down and closes his eyes, enjoying the smooth burning down his throat. He picks up the second shots and downs it, fighting the urge to puke when it hits his stomach. 

“You’re too good at this, it’s concerning. You might become an alcoholic one day.” Phil furrows his eyebrows and takes his second shot like it’s medicine.

“Better than the alternative,” Dan chuckles humourlessly, “no one-day at all.”

“Shhh, be drunk.” Phil waves him off, taking another bite of sushi to mask the tequila. 

“I’m trying.” Dan smirks, taking a sip of his drink. It’s not nearly strong enough for it to have cost £7. 

They end up ordering another round of tequila shots and Phil’s well past tipsy, giggling as he sips his water. 

“Hey,” Phil’s eyes light up, “let’s get out of here.”

“Okay.” Dan smiles, unable to help himself. “Where to?”

“Home, maybe. Maybe a club.” Phil shrugs.

“Yeah because you and clubs go so well together.” Dan rolls his eyes but steals the opportunity to reach across the table and take Phil’s hand.

“We can’t, not here.” Phil pulls his hand back with a small whine.

“Why not?” Dan asks, mostly rhetorically as alcohol swims in his brain, “We’re not dating.”

“Not really.” Phil says softly, the alcohol hitting him harder than Dan. 

“Not really.” Dan repeats, the restaurant suddenly feeling too crowded and simultaneously too quiet; he wants to escape.

“We paid the bill.” Phil pointlessly acknowledges, “We can leave.”

“Right, let’s go then.” Dan nods.

“Where to?” Phil chocks his head, his hair falling in his eyes. 

Right now, he reminds Dan terribly of the wild boy he met seven years ago in a train station in Manchester. The urge to brush the hair out of his eyes and kiss the lines on his face that age and stress have carved into his skin is strong. It takes all Dan’s strength to focus on the blue eyes waiting for his response, and not on the strange desire bubbling up from his chest and threatening to pour out of his mouth. He twists his fingers together.

“Anywhere you want.” Dan breathes.


	5. Closer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This is where the more M-rated aspects begin. While not the focus of this chapter or this fic in general, it's something I'd like to note happening. Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it means so much to me.

The films are received well, as expected. 

They try to watch them after they get home from the restaurant Wednesday night, but Dan falls asleep ten minutes in and Phil ends up changing it over to a re-run of a medical show he hasn’t seen in ages. 

It’s quiet, and Phil can’t stop staring at Dan.

He knows you shouldn’t want so badly to be closer to your best friend when he’s five centimeters from your leg, but he has missed the last fifteen minutes of this show because he was focused on catching the last fifty breaths Dan has taken. 

Maybe it’s because it’s almost one in the morning and Phil’s still pretty drunk. 

Maybe it’s because he’s tired.

Maybe it’s because he’s scared as hell and since the day they moved in together Phil’s known that Dan being beside him meant that Dan was safe, but now that’s not the case. The harm is hiding in Dan’s body and carving away at his insides. The enemy is the poison they’re going to pump into his body once a week for the next twelve months. 

Phil takes a breath to steady him and turns off the TV, picking Dan up bridal style and hitting the light switch with his shoulder on the way to his bedroom. 

Dan feels so much lighter than Phil remembers, than he should. It’s five kilometers to his bedroom and another ten to reach the bed it seems as Phil navigates the darkness with his flatmate in his arms. When Dan shifts and tucks himself against Phil’s chest, Phil wants to make another lap around the flat, just to have this moment last. 

“Phil?” Dan murmurs as Phil places him on his bed and tucks the duvet around him.

“Shh,” Phil whispers, “go to sleep.”

Phil climbs in beside Dan and runs a hand through Dan’s curls like he always used to do when they first met. Dan makes a soft noise with his eyes closed.

“s’hot.” 

“You’re burning up.” Phil rests his hand on Dan’s forehead with a frown.

Dan frowns as well, his eyes flickering open. 

“Wait.” Phil kisses Dan’s forehead on impulse. He climbs from the bed and opens his window half way, the cold chill of night air biting at his arms. In seconds he’s back under the warm duvet. “Better?”

Dan nods, scooting closer to Phil and resting his head on Phil’s chest. 

They fall asleep like that, Dan a space heater in the now freezing room. 

Despite sleeping significantly less, Phil wakes up first the next morning and immediately hates life, everyone in his life, and every single object he owns because holy fuck he’s cold. 

It’s beyond freezing in his bedroom as he curses under his breath and goes to shut his window, only really looking at Dan when he returns to the bed, anxious for the warm duvet. Dan’s pale and colourless, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from being sick. 

Phil feels his skin and it’s like ice.

“Dan,” Phil shoves at his shoulder, shaking him slightly. 

“Mm.” Dan rolls over, stilling for a moment before his eyes snap open and he frowns. “The fuck?”

“I left the window open.” Phil explains as Dan tries to steal the duvet, tugging until Phil’s barely under it.

“Why the fuck?” 

“You were burning up, you liked it.” Phil rolls his eyes, fighting back for the sheets.

“I don’t even recall going to bed.” 

“Well we did, because you’re here now.” Phil, irritated and cold, gives up on the duvet tug of war. “Fine, I’m going to have a shower.”

“Ha.” Dan smirks, burrito-ing himself entirely.

“You’re an ass.” Phil declares as he grabs a towel and walks out. 

In the shower, Phil lets himself relax against the shitty water pressure. He takes the time to properly scrub down his body, closing his eyes as drops from his hair fall down his cheeks and get lost in the crevices of his collarbones.

When he’s at a normal human temperature again, he leans against the shower wall and takes his cock into his hand, fucking into his fist leisurely. It’s been a solid week since he’s touched himself at all and he can’t help the way his mouth falls open and he gasps involuntarily. 

Water drips into his mouth and it’s hard and metallic. He swallows as he wanks harder, imagining fucking someone faceless and nameless against the porcelain of the shower. He comes quickly, cum spilling over his hand as he gasps something that sounds a little too close to Dan’s name.

But it wasn’t Dan’s name. Surely not.

Phil presses his back to the wall and sinks to the floor of the tub, the hot water cascading over his entire body. He closes his eyes and lets it happen, rubbing absentmindedly at the white streaks across his stomach until they’re washed away. 

“Fuck.” Phil laughs, the sound bordering on hysterical. He buries his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

Dan wakes up, for the second time, to Phil fully dressed and browsing on his laptop beside him in bed.

“Hi.” Dan whispers sleepily. 

“Good morning, duvet thief.” Phil nods.

“How was your shower?”

Phil’s memory flashes back to what happened during his shower and guilt flutters through him, “Good. Hot.”

“Did you turn on the heat?” Dan yawns, stretching his limbs out of the covers as if testing the waters.

“Yep.” Phil nudges his glasses back into place with his knuckle. 

“I’m getting my laptop, I’ll be right back.” Dan says before he does just that with a stop to the toilet. 

When they’re side by side again with their laptops Dan pulls up his list and checks off “get really drunk” with a small chuckle. Before he realizes Phil’s watching his screen, Phil comments on it.

“Have sex? Really, that’s your first priority in this life?” Phil’s laughing, but his eyes look sad.

Dan explains about him wanting to re-experience things instead of deciding on new experiences, and Phil understands. Phil can’t help but think that it’s such a Dan thing to.

“But sex, really? When was the last time you got laid?” Phil can’t help his snickering as Dan flushes slightly.

“Uh, every morning in the shower by myself.” Dan scoffs sarcastically. 

Phil flushes deep red and hopes Dan doesn’t notice when he thinks about Dan getting off in the same place and same fashion as Phil had this morning. He lets himself, very briefly, imagine it. 

“I mean, with another human.” Phil doesn’t look at Dan, he focuses on the screen of his laptop.

“I,” Dan thinks about it, and his mind has to stretch back to 2013, “I don’t think I’ve had sex in over a year. Isn’t that wild?”

“I had a thing with Hazel at a party a couple years ago, before we decided to write our book, but that was the last time.” Phil recalls, the memory bittersweet.

“So, I’d like to experience it again. Dying is probably good for a pity fuck, I’d reckon.” 

Phil clears his throat and types ‘twitter’ into the search bar for the third time in ten minutes. “So is that your next endeavor?”

“What, getting laid? Not really.” Dan shrugs, “I’d like to go back to Japan.”

“Can you travel?” 

“Why would I not-“ Dan drops off, anxiety flooding through him. That’s right- he’s got doctors now. Dr. Warren, Dr. Carter. People who can say yay or nay to any plans he has because everything he does has a chance to kill him. He remembers the masks they gave Dan, which he’s supposed to wear in public.

He’d fit in with the Japanese people, at least. He sticks out like a sore thumb here, like his sore throat with a side effect of death can be seen by anyone who passes him on the street. 

“Dan?” Phil says for the third time, “Calm down.”

Dan yanks his arm away from Phil’s grasp and tries to keep his voice even, “I am calm.”

“I’m sure you’re so calm, you haven’t noticed your nails digging into my thigh.” Phil retorts, huffing when Dan flinches away from him.

“Sorry.” Dan says, his voice softer.

They just sit for a few seconds before Phil’s hand moves to Dan’s lower back and he lingers there until Phil can feel Dan’s breathing return to normal.

“Hey, let’s ask at your appointment Friday.” 

Dan nods.

They spend the day pretending like everything is normal, and go to sleep in separate beds. Neither comment on how empty the space beside them feels when they're alone in the dark. 

Exhaustion shuts Dan's mind up and drags him under; dreams of cherry blossoms fill his mind.

Cherry blossoms and a dark-haired man by his side. They're good dreams.


	6. Are you there god? It's me, Dan Howell.

On October 14th Dan wakes up in the middle of a breath he can’t catch. His arms reach out in the darkness for something; for a few seconds he gasps and reaches for water, or his phone, or Phil, but his hands come up empty and so do his lungs. 

He can’t seem to get enough oxygen as his head swims and he keeps begging his body to breathe in, goddammit, breathe in. He knows he needs to calm down but he can feel his body losing consciousness and all it does is increase his heart rate. 

He grabs his phone and dials 999 before he can properly think about it, but he passes out cold as the number dials.

Faint ringing emits from the phone as it clatters to the carpet and Dan collapses inches away onto the floor, his fingertips and his lips blue.

An undeterminable amount of time later he comes to in the backseat of a car, and his head is resting in somebody’s lap. There’s lights flashing rapidly outside the windows above him and he tries to focus but his vision blurs and suddenly he’s drowning in blues and whites, with flickers of red peaking in at the edges.

“Dan,” Phil whispers, somewhere far above him in another world, “Dan, Dan, Dan.” He’s not calling for Dan; his voice sounds more like pleading. Dan can’t figure out how to work his mouth, or he’d respond. He fades back into the black leather of the car.

Dan’s sure he’s dying. Given, it’s not new news. Regardless, it’s always there in the back of his mind. It eats away at his mind like the cancer is eating away at his lungs and he can’t think about much else the same way he can’t breathe very well these days. He feels high, he can’t think straight and he feels hands on his wrists but they seem detached from any form. 

Briefly, he feels like a time traveler. Two am, four am, then suddenly eleven am dissolves with the soft white clock on the blinding face of his phone and he can’t remember more than a few seconds of the past nine hours. He opens his eyes and properly sees the sun for the first time that day, and it feels like he’s seeing it for the first time in his entire life.

“Hi.” He rasps, to the blank space in front of the small window in the hospital room that is his life, currently.

“You’re awake.” A voice so familiar it might as well be his own says from behind him. 

“M’ sow.” Dan tries to say, but it comes out a jumble.

“I beg your pardon?” The voice says again.

Dan rolls over to face Phil. “I said I’m sorry.”

“Dan.” Phil laughs, the sound relieved. “You don’t need to be sorry. I’m glad you’re awake now.”

“What happened?” Dan pushes himself up into a sitting position and swallows the feeling of sick that rises with the movement. 

This can’t be right. He was diagnosed three weeks ago; he still has seven months until he’s supposed to die, right? He’s gone to all three chemo treatments, taken medicine, and avoided sugar and sunlight. His hair has been falling out in small clumps in the shower but it’s still there and he definitely should not be dying right now.

Yet, here he is. 

“I woke up when I heard a thump come from your room and then, uh” Phil licks his lips, “Your phone was on the floor and a 999 operator was speaking, and you were on the floor, and I panicked.” 

“You panicked?” Dan clears his throat, the phlegm built up in his chest not moving an inch. 

“Yeah.” Phil runs a hand over his face and it takes Dan a groggy second to realize that Phil’s on the verge of tears. It’s so rare to see that Dan’s actually in awe for a second, before guilt crashes down on him so hard he almost collapses again with the weight of it. 

“I remember a car.” Dan says, focusing his energy on remembering. 

“I told them, uh, you didn’t need an ambulance.” Phil says softly. God, is his voice always this broken?

“I didn’t.” Dan says quickly, feeling miles away from Phil. 

Phil is in the shitty hospital chair beside him with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, still in pajamas. A dry sob shudders through Phil’s body and shakes his shoulders.

“Phil.” Dan says at the exact same time Phil says “Dan”.

Dan goes silent, staring at the IV in his left hand. 

“Dan.” Phil says so quietly Dan almost doesn’t catch it, “I- I was so scared.”

“It’s okay, I’m okay.” The words feel fucked up in Dan’s mouth; he wishes desperately that they would sound more comforting. 

“I thought you had died.” Phil admits, looking up from his hands for the first time. His eyes are bloodshot and Dan knows he isn’t wearing contacts. Maybe it’s easier to say these things when Phil can’t see his face clearly.

“I didn’t.” Dan says, his reply instant and firm.

“You didn’t.” Phil says before a sob escapes his chest and he retreats back into his arms. 

“I didn’t.” Dan whispers, moving over on the bed, “Please come here.”

Phil scoots the chair back loudly as he stands and walks over to Dan. Dan thinks he’s going to climb over the railing and lie down, but Phil leans over the railing and presses his lips to Dan’s. 

It’s a lot.

Dan’s on drugs, but he doesn’t feel high until Phil’s lips connect with his and suddenly they’re kissing like a day hasn’t passed since 2009. Phil puts a hand on Dan’s cheek and they pull away from each other for a brief second. Dan has tears in his eyes and so does Phil; both of their cheeks are wet with a mix of saltwater and Dan twists his fingers in Phil’s t-shirt and drags him back in.

Dan feels like he’s brand new. He’s sure he’s just been thrown on the floor and revived; all he feels for the first time in forever is warmth and it cascades through every single goddamn vein in his body. All he knows is that he never wants this moment to end. 

Unfortunately, the heart monitor beeps enough to alert a nurse to the room and Phil jumps back, breathless and crying when she enters the room. 

“Hello.” She says, apathetic to the events that transpired, “Glad to see you awake, Dan. Had a bit of a scare there.” She messes with his IV bag and presses a few buttons on the monitors with her long, burgundy nails. Click. Click.

“What’s wrong with me?” Dan asks, breathless for no reason relevant to his illness.

“You have cancer, surprise.” The nurse raises her eyebrows, and Dan likes her instantly. 

“Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” He throws his head back in faux disbelief. 

“How do you feel?” She pulls on gloves and sticks a thermometer under Dan’s armpit, manhandling him a bit.

“Better than I did last night.” Dan smirks, “These drugs are doing wonders.”

Phil doesn’t speak, wide-eyed in the corner of the room. Dan can practically see the gears turning over and over beneath that mop of black hair and he tries to telepathically tell Phil it’s alright. 

It’s pretty ineffective. 

“You’re not actually on any.” She informs him, and Dan stupidly wonders why he feels so good. “You weren’t responding to medication, so we decided to let you gain consciousness when you were ready. Basically, your body shut down because of lack of oxygen. Let’s not do that again, alright?”

“I mean, I’ll try my best. Never was too good at following instructions.” Dan coughs. 

“You better try your best. Your vitals are looking a lot better and I’m going to prescribe you an inhaler. All it’s going to do is calm down the inflammation in your lungs if your body tries to fight back this hard again, okay?” She removes his IV and puts a Hello Kitty bandage over it.

“Right, thanks.” Dan nods; pressing his lips together, “Is that all?”

“Yes sir, that’s it for now.” She smiles, but it’s hard line on her face, “Take care of yourself, you’re going through the hardest thing you’ll ever experience.”

“I’m going to try.” Dan swallows hard, glancing at Phil.

“And you, keep an eye on him.” She directs at Phil as she exists, not even leaving her name in her lingering presence. 

When they’re alone, Dan feels vaguely nervous around Phil for the first time in almost seven years. 

“So.” Dan starts off, his heart pounding in his chest. “I think I’m all set then.”

“Yeah.” Phil almost smiles. Almost.

Dan slides off the bed and begins gathering his things. He was left in his pajama bottoms and t-shirt, no obnoxious hospital gown to cover nothing, for which he was thankful. 

Dan gets discharged in no time at all and then they’re waiting on their car back home. On the tiny bench outside, Dan watches an old woman smoking a cigarette. 

“You think you wouldn’t do that right outside a hospital.” Dan says aloud, not caring to hide the volume of his voice. 

“I know, right? A bit rude.” Phil shakes his head.

“Excuse me,” Dan pipes up, and Phil hides his face with his hand, “I literally have lung cancer, can you not?” 

“Where are your manners?” The old lady retorts, taking another drag. 

“Probably with my promise of a long and healthy life- in the shitter.” Dan stands up and tries to ignore the way he sways. Phil’s grabbing at his hand, trying to drag him back down. 

“Dan!” Phil hisses, “Leave her alone!”

“No!” Dan shouts, “I’m annoyed.”

“And the world revolves around you?” She sneers, “News flash, kid, it’s a hospital. Everyone’s dying.”

“Come on, he has lung cancer. Put it out.” A man nearby says softly, looking up from his newspaper. 

“Dan and Phil?” A voice, young sounding, says suddenly from behind them. 

They both almost groan. They share a millisecond glance they both know means they’d rather jump off a bridge than deal with a fan right now, but by the time they turn fully around they’re both all smiles. 

She looks about fifteen, maybe sixteen, and her dad is standing protectively a few feet away. She grins, but it’s worryingly apprehensive. “H-hi, I don’t mean to bother you, but could I get a picture?” 

“Of course!” Dan grins, reaching out to take her phone. 

“Why are you at the hospital?” She braves before they all smile for the selfie. 

Dan should have looked at it. He should have looked at it and deleted it because on the peace sign he might as well get patented, his hello kitty circle bandage is clear as day and his eyes look terrified. 

“Visiting a friend.” Phil says instantly, always quick on his feet. “It’s another Youtuber, so please don’t spread this around.”

Phil faintly remembers someone telling him that you can always tell if someone is lying by how many details of the story they give you. Over the years, he’s gotten good at lying. Too good.

Their car arrives like God himself has sent them a way out of this situation and Dan keeps up the smiling until the tinted windows are reflecting buildings ten minutes away from the hospital and then he frowns, collapsing onto Phil’s shoulder. 

“Fuck.” Dan laughs, because that’s about all he can manage before he starts crying against the fabric of Phil’s shirt. Sobs shake them both as they cling to each other for dear life. 

All at once all Dan can think of is everyone he has ever loved in his entire life, and how none of them he loved so dearly as he loves Phil. He feels so goddamn small as he collapses onto Phil, trembling with silent, open-mouthed sobs, and all he can coherently think is “I’m sorry” and “it aches”.

He’s thankful for Phil, with whom he shares a home and shares a brain, because he’s not so much looking at rock bottom as slamming into it at full force.

It’s a long drive home.


	7. To be Alone With You

It’s ten shades of ironic that the Stand Up To Cancer live stream is the next day. Dan and Phil tread lightly around the flat like they know if they pause in one another’s company they’ll have to have a conversation about yesterday.

Neither of them wants to have a conversation about yesterday.

When the tension lingering between every single room and dripping down the walls of the hallways is too much, too suffocating in the small house, Dan finds himself in the threshold of Phil’s room, leaning against the doorframe. Dan takes hesitant comfort in the knowledge that their doors will never be shut when they’re both home. 

“What are you wearing today?” Dan breaks the silence, knowing full well Phil would never.

“Dunno yet, something nice?” Phil shrugs, glancing up from his book.

“What makes me look…” Dan frowns, his eyebrows creasing as he thinks, “not like I’ve lost five kilos in the past month.”

“You could wear your bomber jacket.” Phil suggests, “It’s got broad shoulders.”

“I could, yeah. You could wear yours too. Fan service.” Dan cracks a smile.

“It’s not fan service, it’s Phil service. I love my jacket.” Phil huffs, but his smile is a mirror image of Dan’s.

“Can you believe Dan and Phil invented wearing matching outfits?” Dan deadpans, crossing the room to sit down on Phil’s bed, only to be met with a pillow to the face.

“Stop!” Phil laughs as Dan shrieks dramatically and tries to yank the pillow from Phil’s hands.

“You asked for this, Lester.” Dan winks, gathering the two pillows not under Phil’s ass and retreating to the opposite side of the bed.

“It’s too early for this,” Phil whines, but backs up a little on the bed and closes his book.

“You know what, you’re right. This is stupid.” Dan shrugs, his mouth turning down at the corners as he starts to stand up. Phil laughs slightly and lets his guard down, right as Dan turns on his heels and leaps back onto the bed with a pillow raised valiantly above his head. “SYYCCCCHHH!”

“AHH!” Phil tries to dive out of the way, using his pillow as a shield.

Dan’s pillow collides with Phil’s side and Phil slumps over on the bed, sprawling out on his stomach and putting his pillow above his head.

“You’d die in a proper battle.” Dan notes, climbing over Phil’s lifeless form and sitting on his bum. 

“I’m a lowly city boy, not fit for battle.” Phil coughs into the mattress, holding up one hand to wave his “white flag.”

“And I, I am the victorious king of the castle. Which means I get…” Dan glances around the room, not noticing Phil peeking out from beneath his head-pillow shield. “Your Totoro.” 

“You already have one!” Phil whines, waiting until Dan’s back is turned away.

“Maybe he wants a frien- aHH!” Dan’s suddenly flipped onto his back, thrown off Phil and catapulted into the mattress, only to have Phil straddling him from above, a pillow hoisted above his head. “Fuck you!”

“Never let your guard down, not until your enemy is properly dead, Dan.” Phil shakes his head, grinning wildly. “Be ready at all times! Any last words?”

“You’ll never take me alive!” Dan screeches, trying to get out from beneath Phil. Phil has the mass he lacks, however, and Dan finds himself genuinely stuck. 

“I’ll let you go under one condition.” Phil lowers the pillow to the bed beside him and crosses his arms.

“I don’t want your pity release, just kill me” Dan spits, his eyes wild and crazy the way he always gets when he has a second to pretend he’s an actor. 

“No, no. No pity.” Phil grins, shaking his head, “You might be interested.” 

“Fine. Do tell.” Dan stops fighting and collapses back onto the sheets, looking up at Phil. 

“I’ll release you… for a kiss.” Phil says, his voice flooded with trepidation. 

Dan watches the blush creep over Phil’s pasty skin and can’t help the smile that takes over his face as he’s trapped under Phil’s legs. He knows he could easily outwit Phil and steal the pillow from beside him and go ham until Phil will inevitably retreat, but that doesn’t sound like as much fun as the alternative. 

“You could have made the deal of a lifetime and you go for just a kiss? What are you, Aurora?” Dan laughs, sitting up the best he can to put a hand on Phil’s cheek and draw their faces together as he closes his eyes.

They kiss softly at first, gently taking in the other person like water on a hot summer day. What is supposed to last a few seconds lasts a minute, and when Dan pulls back after a minute more Phil emits a low whine from his throat. 

“My legs are actually numb, move.” Dan laughs, gently shoving Phil off him. 

Phil removes himself without a word, looking at Dan like he put the goddamn sun in the sky. Dan flushes under Phil’s gaze and runs a hand through his hair, averting his eyes. 

“Continue?” Phil asks softly, reaching out his hands to find Dan’s.

Dan wants to, so badly. Every single pore in his body is desperate to press itself against Phil’s skin, but his mind restrains him. He ignores how exhausted he suddenly feels, the wave of tiredness a constant in his life, and sits back on his legs.

“Maybe, we should talk about it first.” Dan suggests, his voice soft and calculated.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Phil agrees instantly, taking his hands back.

“But we have the stand up stream in an hour and a half, so we need to leave soon. Why don’t we have this conversation later, okay?” Dan fights the urge to cough, focusing on the grounding blue of Phil’s eyes.

“Right. Yeah, maybe we can get dinner tonight and talk about it.” Phil smiles.

“I have another appointment in the morning, will you come?” Dan stands from the bed. He wants to kiss Phil before he leaves, but this is all so new and he’s not sure where the boundaries are anymore.

“Of course. So, we’re wearing the bomber jackets, right?” Phil licks his lips, retreating to his closet.

“Yep. I’m going to go get ready, let’s leave at noon.” Dan says and then just goes for it, crossing the room in a few strides to kiss Phil squarely on the lips. They stare into each other’s eyes for a few seconds after, before Dan grins and turns away without another word.

It’s wild, the stream. They’re asked unoriginal questions and they have to do some stupid games, and all Dan can think is how many people are watching this that have no idea he’s got cancer. He begs people to buy the song when he’s barely able to listen to it himself, surrounded by the memories of when they recorded it months prior. Back when he thought everything was okay.

He stays in his head a lot; answering questions when asked and watching Phil potentially embarrass himself as a Youtube Star in A Child’s Car (but hey, seven seconds was kind of impressive). He does that thing where he gets too enthusiastic about Phil accomplishing something minor and for a second he worries if it comes across as fake or, worse, too genuine. 

What if people can see right through him? What if they can see the tumours in his lungs and the place Phil holds in his heart and all the ways he’s lied over the past seven years because dammit, can’t he just have some privacy? 

“Hey, calm down.” Phil says softly out of nowhere, putting a hand on Dan’s shoulder. For a second Dan wants to flinch away, until he remembers that they’re in the restroom together and nobody else is around. No cameras are watching them.

“I’m calm.” Dan says, not so much a lie as a way to fool himself into thinking it’s the truth.

“Are you in pain?” Phil asks, more quietly.

They don’t touch each other again; they don’t even look at each other as they stand side by side at the sinks. 

Dan thinks about it, taking a forced breath to see how well his lungs have decided to function today. His chest is sore, as always, and his breaths are harder to catch than they used to be, but other than that he’s feeling alright today.

“I’m fine.” Dan says honestly. 

“Good.” Phil nods, because he knows when Dan’s lying, but more importantly he knows when he’s not.

They linger in the restroom for another few minutes, both of them fighting the urge to break Public Protocol and sneak a kiss. They’ve always had rules, guidelines, and unspoken things they are Never Under Any Circumstances To Do In Public, but that was when everything was platonic, even the things that crossed the lines.

Now, it was like 2009 all over again and they were wildly floundering over all the lines they had drawn, all the rules they had sworn to never break.

“Hey Phil?” Dan says suddenly, yanking himself out of his head, “I kind of want to have this conversation right now.”

“In the toilets?” Phil cocks his head.

“No, at home. Why don’t we leave?” 

“We’re done with our bit, we can make some excuse.” Phil agrees. 

“No excuses, let’s just ghost it.” 

So they do. And if there’s anyone confused at where they’ve gone, or when they left, they’re too damn afraid to say anything. That’s one of the perks of being an ambiguous platonic- maybe- romantic power couple with a fan base that outweighs the population of Austria- they’re kind of intimidating. 

When they’re back on their sofa with Ribena and pajamas Dan insisted on changing in to, they sit in silence.

“So.” Phil says before trailing off.

“So.” Dan echoes, looking over at Phil.

“You have chemo in the morning. I’m coming.” 

“Yep.” Dan nods, looking down at his glass.

“This is weird.” Phil says suddenly, “Because right now you just feel like my best friend.”

“No, I completely agree.” Dan almost laughs, “How weird is that?”

“So weird.” Phil actually starts laughing, which causes Dan to join in.

“What in the ever living fuck are we doing?” Dan can’t stop laughing, setting his glass down on the coffee table.

“Trying to get through life without falling apart.” Phil deadpans, which succeeds in making them both laugh harder.

“Hey, hey.” Dan coughs, trying to refrain from laughing more, “I’m serious. What are we doing?”

Phil sobers a little and looks over at Dan with concentrated eyes. “I don’t know.”

“This isn’t going to be easy, you know. We’ve done this before. We’ve been friends for almost a decade, we live tog-“ Dan is cut off by Phil leaning across the sofa and kissing the words from his mouth.

They kiss for a few seconds and then Phil pulls back. 

“Yeah, okay.” Phil says warmly, “Maybe it won’t be easy. But maybe it will be very easy, because we already know everything about each other. And we live together, and we’ve done this before.”

Dan smiles and for some bizarre reason he feels like he might start crying because of course Phil would turn around and say the exact right thing.

“It’s so different now, than it was back then.” Phil sits back on the couch, confidence refreshed from the kiss. “Back then, we had every obstacle in our way. My parents, your parents, and the fact you were in uni, even your age. We didn’t even live together until your second year.”

“I can’t believe we still made it work.” Dan laughs, the sound a little broken. 

“Of course we did.” Phil smiles, “And now, we have nothing in the way.”

“We don’t have to worry about parents, or being far away from each other, or even money issues. We’ve got it all*.” Dan adds, scooting so they’re closer together on the couch. They ignore the metaphorical asterisk by the [all], not wanting to skip down the story of their lives to the end where it lies in a footnote beside (Having cancer means you can’t have it all, because you can’t have it all if you’re dead within a year).

“So, you want to do this, then?” Phil asks seriously.

“Do, us? Be together again?” 

“Yeah. Be boyfriends, or whatever.” Phil laughs, and Dan understands why. The word sounds so trivial to what they really are, what they always have been. 

“Yeah, Phil. I do.” Dan can’t help his smile. Even though he’s exhausted, and his chest feels so tight it’s uncomfortable with every breath, it doesn’t really seem to matter right now. It’s funny, how Phil has always seemed to outweigh worldly discomforts. 

It’s funny how Phil has always seemed to outweigh everything.


	8. The Amazing Fault is Not on Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick notes: The actual smut begins. You have been forewarned. Second note- I really appreciate kudos and comments. This will be completed soon! Enjoy!

They fall asleep together that evening- or more so, Phil falls asleep and Dan suffers. 

It’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep with a cold but every time you lie down you just about suffocate- except every time Dan tries to fall asleep a searing pain in his chest yanks him back into consciousness. Same thing, really.

He reluctantly uses the inhaler the doctor at the hospital prescribed to him around three in the morning, but it does very little to help with the tightness in his chest. His head swims and he just wishes he could be asleep.

When breathing gets harder, he tries to force himself to inhale and exhale, telling himself that it will just be a few short hours until he can go to the hospital for chemotherapy and they would help him breathe normally again before. He just has to make it to morning.

Unfortunately, his lungs can’t tell time from the beating of his heart like a clock on the wall and with every passing minute his anxiety grows.

“Phil.” Dan says into the darkness, breaking his resolve to not bother him.

“Phil.” Dan says again, giving Phil’s shoulder a nudge.

“Phil.” Dan says a third time, his voice breaking as he calls out for his best friend like a small child who has said “mum” loudly three times in a shop and then whispered “mummy” in embarrassed desperation to get his mum’s attention.

“Huh?” Phil makes a noise, rolling over and rubbing at his face, “You okay?”

“I can’t breathe.” Dan laughs, the sound desperate and weak. “I mean, I can.” He has to stop talking to catch his breath, “but poorly.”

“Alright, did you try your inhaler?” Phil sits up, his hand blindly searching the nightstand for his glasses.

“Yeah, three times. Didn’t do much.” Dan feels sweat gathering at the back of his neck in the cold room. 

“Okay, let’s go to a&e, then. Get your coat.” Phil says calmly, sliding out of bed as he shoves his glasses onto his face.

Dan could cry. Of course Phil would handle this with grace and certainty, with ease and calm. And right now he trusts Phil with his life as he numbly grabs his coat and focuses on breathing in, one two three, out one two three, in one two three.

Phil calls a car and gathers Dan’s identification and medical papers and they wait together on the pavement in the brisk cold of four a.m. October.

Winter is threatening to invade autumn much too soon, Dan thinks. It’s too early in the year for the last surviving clumps of grass living in the decade-old cracks in the pavement to be turning yellow. Even in the dim light before the sun has dragged herself out of bed and climbed over the horizon, Dan notices how dead the world looks. 

A part of him, the part of him he doesn’t want to talk to, wonders if he’ll live to see the world fully alive again. The thought worsens his already shit lung function and he turns to bury his face in Phil’s chest. He breathes in the minty warmth of Phil’s jacket and prays silently to a god he doesn’t believe in that the car will arrive soon, like it did when they were at the hospital with the fan… yesterday. God, was that really only yesterday?

“Was what yesterday?” Phil asks, his breath forming puffy white clouds.

Dan realizes he said his thoughts aloud and just shakes his head, nuzzling closer to Phil. 

It’s a little weird; it is, learning to love Phil this way again. It comes easily, like tea and films on a rainy Saturday evening, but he can’t think about it too much or it becomes something difficult. Phil has not been a difficult part of Dan’s life for so long that the only distress Phil could cause is if he were to let his absence linger. 

So Dan doesn’t think about it too much. He accepts the love he is given, new but vintage, and gives as much as he can back. And that’s as much as he can do right now.

The driver arrives and completely expects them to be drunk, out at this hour on a Saturday, so when Phil tells him that they need to go to the hospital, he’s concerned.

“You mates alright?” He says in a thick accent, spitting slightly as he speaks. 

“Yep.” Phil says firmly, rubbing small circles on Dan’s back. 

By the time they get to accident and emergency, Dan’s pale white and he’s gasping for air slowly. Dan is clinging to the hem of Phil’s coat as they check themselves in. Even though it was farther, Phil chose the hospital that the lung center branched off of so they could go right over after they patched Dan up. It was the same hospital as the previous night.

“You okay, bear?” Phil murmurs as a nurse hooks Dan up to a pure oxygen machine, draping it around his neck.

“Bear? That’s an old nickname. Haven’t heard you say that in years.” Dan whispers, exhausted as he slumps back onto the bed. 

“It’s not been relevant, I guess. But you’re mine again.” Phil shrugs, kissing the back of Dan’s hand.

“I,” Dan breathes, long and deep through the tubes, feeling a bit like he is in a dream, “have always been yours. And I always will be.”

Phil smiles, his heart warm in his chest, “Even if Even Peters wants you?”

“Well, of course I’d leave you for Evan Peters.” Dan squeezes Phil’s hand.

“I’d expect nothing less. Try and get some sleep, Dan. Your lungs need to rest.” 

Dan, breathing fine with the tube, finally relaxes and falls into a fitful sleep, only to be woken up at seven fifteen. He first notices that the sun has risen over London and concentrated itself through the blinds of the small window. Strips of light pave lines over Phil’s skin where he’s passed out in the chair by Dan’s bed, his glasses sideways on his face.

A hand touches his arm and he glances over to see the same doctor from the before adjusting his sheets. He has no IV this time, just the oxygen tube.

“Fancy seeing you here.” Dan whispers out of respect to Phil, and the woman smiles.

“My name is Doctor Rink, Dan. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon or I would have introduced myself.” 

“I’m sorry. I tried the inhaler, but it didn’t help.” Dan rubs at the back of his neck, the tube itching his skin.

“No need to be sorry on behalf of your lungs, I think you’ll just need pure oxygen on hand for when it gets bad. Eventually, you might need it most of the time.” Dr. Rink explains, and Dan can’t help but feel slightly irritated that she doesn’t even attempt to be quiet.

“When is eventually?” 

“Maybe a few months, maybe a few weeks.” She gives a small shrug, “It varies for everyone. To be completely honest, your primary physician Dr. Warren sent us your records and your condition is progressing quicker than usual.”

“What does that mean?” Dan knows what it means, and she knows he knows what it means, but he’s pale white and scared and she humours him.

“It means that you should do chemo treatments a little more often, which I’ve discussed with Dr. Carter. It also means you need to keep drinking lots of water and continue with the FODMAP diet.” 

“Please don’t bullshit me,” Dan begs, his voice small, “if you had to guess how much time I had left, what would you say?”

Seven am in a hospital might as well be a different dimension.

“That’s not a question for me, Dan.” Dr. Rink says, but her eyes look tired. “We work closely with Dr. Carter and her staff and they’re going to try to get your body to respond better to the chemotherapy, but so far it’s hard to tell.”

“Okay.” Dan swallows, a lump in his throat.

“Okay.” Phil echoes from beside him, voice thick with sleep but serious.

“You’re up.” Dan turns, semi-surprised when Phil leans forward to peck him on the lips. 

“Yeah, just for a minute.” Phil adjusts his glasses and stands, smoothing out his shirt. “Toliet?”

“Down the hall to your right.” Dr. Rink points, her eyes following Phil as he leaves the room. “Dan,”

“Yeah?” 

“While he’s out of the room, I just want to say something,” She takes a steadying breath, “This is hard for you, and it’s going to be almost as hard for him. How long have you been together?” It’s a weirdly invasive question but Dan trusts her for a reason he can’t place; it might be the brutal honesty. 

“Seven years.” Dan says automatically.

“He won’t abandon you, but he’s going to go through every stage of grief as your condition progresses and I want you to recognize that, okay?” 

“Right.” Dan responds immediately, but his words feel hollow. He wants to keep talking, and press questions about why she talks like he’s certainly going to die, and why she assumes so much about him and Phil’s relationship. Instead of opening his mouth again, he watches her mill around the room until Phil returns, and then he watches her leave.

“Everything alright?” Phil puts a hand on Dan’s shoulder. 

“Yep.” Dan says, the weight of the past conversation thick in the back of his throat. “Great.”

Chemo is fine. He needs to start coming twice a week now. Great.

Phil falls asleep again. Rose isn’t there. Dan is alone.

The train home is quiet, as if the semi-packed car passengers can sense how drained Dan is and keep their mouths shut. Dan doesn’t know if he is thankful or if the silence leaves him stewing in his thoughts; drowning in the never knowing.

“Hey, Phil?” Dan says over the roar of the tracks. 

“Yeah?” Phil looks up from his phone, pocketing it.

“When we do the DAPGOOSE event, can we go early and spend time on the beach?” Dan’s voice is barely a whisper.

“Of course.” Phil says instantly. 

“Thanks.” Dan smiles and kisses Phil’s arm where it’s stretched near his face, holding onto the bar. It’s barely a touch of lips, but it makes them feel better.

As it turns out, his doctors don’t want him to travel. Missing chemo is bad, traveling is hard on the body, and he really needs rest. But Dan basically says fuck it and they book plane tickets anyway- which they can’t really stop him from doing.

It’s a work trip, after all. 

They decide to leave the day before Halloween and spend two days in Florida before going to LA. Phil books the tickets and Dan worries.

It’s the 28th of October and they announce and release tickets for the European shows, because Dan doesn’t want to let anyone down. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine, Phil, drop it. 

Dan tweets about it and lies down on the floor, tries to forget how much the shows drained him, tries to forget how much more they will drain him now. As he runs a hand through his hair, he ignores how thin it feels. How it’s coming out quickly and eventually it will be gone. How he’s got that oxygen tank in the corner of the lounge that he refuses to use. 

“Dan?” Phil stands above him and peers down, “I could hear your thinking from the next room.”

“The thoughts are loud today. The tickets are up for Europe.” Dan closes his eyes.

“Our last tour.” Phil throws himself onto the couch. 

“I’m tired.” Dan opens his eyes and focuses on the tangled carpet. 

“Sixth of December it’ll all be over.” Phil says, “Hang in there until then.”

Dan doesn’t reply, he instead imagines the beach he’s about to go to and closes his eyes again. 

The plane ride to America is spent with Dan glued to the window, his eyes surveying over the ocean far below. When clouds take over and obstruct the view, he focuses on the shapes and light sneaking through. When night obscures that view, he closes the shade and leans against Phil’s shoulder. He sleeps.

They stay in a hotel by the water with thick white sheets and seashells plastered onto the walls. Despite it being late October, the air is thick and moist and Dan wishes it could drown him. It starts raining when they get to the room.

Phil got two queen beds out of habit, out of comfort. 

It’s off-season, and the hotel is too quiet. Dan collapsed on one of the beds and lets out an exaggerated groan. 

“Is the bed to your comfort, Mr. Howell?” Phil teases, moving to lob a pillow at Dan before thinking better of the idea.

“It’s great.” Dan mumbles enthusiastically from where his face is shoved in the duvet. 

“The oceanfront rooms are so cheap this time of year.” Phil muses, pushing the siding glass door open. 

“Isn’t it weird that money isn’t really an issue for us these days?” Dan rolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow.

“I’ll never get used to that.” Phil shakes his head, the sea breeze blowing mist from the rain into his face. It’s kind of refreshing. 

“Me either.” 

They spend the evening playing scrabble on the balcony and watching the off and on again rain. 

“Octo.” Dan says victoriously, crossing his arms. 

The board is packed, and they’ve been taking ten minutes turns.

“No way that counts.” Phil scoffs, “Try again.”

“It counts! It means eight!” Dan protests.

“You can’t use prefixes. If this hotel had wifi I’d look it up.” 

“It does have wifi, what do you think I’ve been doing on my british phone while you take thirty minutes to play the word “toy”?” Dan squints. 

“No way! You didn’t tell me, I’ve been forced to enjoy the view.” Phil tries to snatch Dan’s phone and misses, falling forward and hitting the table. The table falls and knocks the scrabble board to the ground, spilling about twenty letters off the edge of the balcony. 

“Fuck.” Dan laughs, loud and sharp, “Way to go, Phil.” 

But he’s not mad. 

“Noooooo!” Phil leaps up to save the rest, peering over the balcony. “They’re in the dunes.”

“Good luck finding wood tiles in sand dunes.” Dan’s still laughing, gathering the surviving tiles and putting them back in the bag. “I think I win by default.” 

“The sand is wet, they’ll be easy to find. Please come with me, it’s stopped raining.” Phil pouts, and Dan thankfully finds it endearing. 

Dan takes a step closer to Phil and kisses him, putting his hands on Phil’s hips. All at once, Dan wonders how he’s survived the last four and a half years of not being able to do this (except a few times when drunk, shush). 

“I love you.” Dan whispers when they part, and moves to hold Phil’s hands.

“I love you too.” Phil smiles and it’s the soft smile he used when they first met all the time, but he keeps it reserved now that they’re older. Dan would cross oceans for that smile.

“Let’s go find your board game disaster before it gets dark. Maybe we’ll catch the sunset.” Dan grins, guiding Phil back into their hotel room.

The rain has washed the clouds and pollen out of the sky and left a clear view of the sea stretching out for miles in front of them. They tread carefully over the wooden decks leading out to the beach, but pause so Phil can climb over the railing and retrieve his tiles.

“This is illegal!” Phil giggles, his bare feet sinking into the damp sand as he finds about four of them. “How many fell, do you reckon?”

“Like thirty! Keep going!” Dan encourages, staying safety behind the railing as he watches Phil struggle. 

“Shhhit, I can’t find any more.” Phil whines, tripping.

“How many do you have?” Dan peers over the edge, searching with his eyes.

“Six.” Phil pouts.

“Good enough. Come back.” Dan laughs, reaching out a hand to help Phil back onto the decking. 

Phil pockets the six sandy tiles and suggests they walk along the beach, to which Dan joyfully agrees.

They’re reluctant to hold hands. It’s silly, on this beach with no one around, but with their luck one prying eye will take a picture they can’t deny. Nobody even knows they’re here; they managed to avoid anyone in the airport.

“Phil,” Dan says only to the water, just letting the word roll off his tongue and get swallowed by the air. It’s windy as fuck. 

Phil’s staring at him from a distance, smiling. He looks like he belongs here, with his top two buttons undone and his shorts clinging to his pale legs. His hair is wild. His smile is everything.

“I love you!” Dan shouts into the wind, cupping his hands to make sure Phil hears it.

Phil’s smile grows and he starts running back, stopping half a foot away to twist his fingers in Dan’s jumper and pull him in, kissing him square on the mouth. “I love you too.”

“We’re in public.” Dan flushes, stepping back with a smile that betrays his words.

“Who cares?” Phil says, and his voice is loud and breathless. 

“Yeah.” Dan laughs, stepping back and pressing his lips to Phil’s jaw, and then his lips. “Who cares?”

The humidity doesn’t help with Dan’s breathing, but he’s brought oxygen with him in the hotel room and he’s got his inhaler on hand. If his lungs won’t work in his favour, he will. 

Phil loves the ocean at this time of year because it’s too cold to logically go for a swim. He loves the sea, but going in it is another matter entirely. So he dips his toes in and shrieks at the cold, the sound lost in the roar of the waves. 

“It’s going to storm again!” Dan shouts, like he cares. As if he doesn’t want it to rain on them because they left their phones in the room and he might never get to dance carefree in the rain with Phil ever again.

“Who cares?!” Phil laughs, spreading his arms out and digging his toes into the sand.

“Who cares!” Dan echoes, “Maybe who cares can be our always!” 

“I’m in love with you, Hazel Grace.” Phil gets close enough to see the freckles on Dan’ nose.

“Stop it.” Dan laughs, running a hand through his hair.

“Is this beach our Amsterdam?” Phil asks seriously, “Is this why you wanted to go?”

Dan pauses, his expression carefully neutral. He knew Phil would figure him out. “It’s just a beach, Phil. I just wanted to go on holiday with you.”

“Right.” Phil says, taking Dan’s hand, “Right.”

They head back when the sun, obscured by clouds, sinks below the horizon. They walk back in silence, but when they enter the room Phil backs Dan into the wall and kisses him the way he refrained from doing on the beach.

“This isn’t our Amsterdam,” Dan says as Phil kisses his neck, “this is our life. It’s just a stop, at a beach.” 

“It’s just a holiday.” Phil agrees, his hands messing with the hem of Dan’s shirt. “Do you want…?”

“Oh, god yes.” Dan’s hands start working on the rest of Phil’s buttons and they back up onto one of the beds. 

They leave the balcony door open and go for the bed closer to the door, the cool sea breeze tickles their leg hair as they fall on top of each other. Hands work to remove clothing and soon it’s just them, naked on the bed in a seaside hotel.

“Do you have lube?” Phil asks as Dan kisses down his chest.

“Yeah, smaller pocket of my backpack.” Dan pants, leaning back to go get it.

“So quick to assume, Dan.” Phil laughs, but his pupils are wide and he’s half-hard against his stomach. 

“Always late, but always prepared.” Dan laughs, and he’s thankful that this isn’t awkward. As if anything with Phil could be awkward.

They kiss some more. It’s mostly kissing at first, hot and wet and open-mouthed. They make out until Dan’s short of breath and then Phil offers to take over, pushing Dan onto his back and straddling him. It starts raining outside, and it registers somewhere in the back of Dan’s mind.

“I’ve missed this.” Phil admits as he takes Dan’s cock into his hand, stroking lightly as Dan’s eyes flutter shut.

“I have too.” 

“Let’s see if I remember what you like.” Phil laughs softly as Dan lets out a gasp.

“That, that’s good.” Dan grins, flashing his teeth in the dim light.

Phil takes the lube bottle and opens it, before hesitating. “Suck.” Phil commands, putting his two fingers in front of Dan’s mouth. Because of course Phil would remember that Dan liked being told what to do.

Dan takes Phil’s long fingers into his mouth and sucks hard and wet over them, taking them until they’re almost at the back of his throat. When they’re good and wet Phil removes them, leaving a trail of saliva down Dan’s chin. It’s not such a bad look.

It’s mostly for show, because Phil gets about knuckle-deep before applying lube to spread Dan further. It’s two fingers, and then three fingers. Then two fingers again, and then it’s Dan fucking onto his fingers to send a signal to Phil that he’s ready.

Phil uses too much lube, and asks if Dan’s okay too many times, and has a bad habit of going completely silent for minutes at a time when he’s too aroused to speak.

And Dan loves him more than anyone else in this world, at this moment. Always.

As Phil lines himself up and pushes in, Dan can almost see stars. It’s like the ceiling has opened up and Dan’s looking at the Florida sky miles above them, speckled with dots of yellow light and a full moon. 

Phil is the moon, and the sun. And everything, probably.

“Is this good?” Phil asks, and Dan bites back a laugh.

“Yeah, good. Maybe angle down a bit.” 

“Like this?” Phil thrusts down and Dan lets out a loud moan he instantly feels embarrassed by as Phil hits his prostate head-on. “Oh, you liked that.”

“Shut up, oh my god.” Dan’s flushed and achingly hard against his stomach. 

Fucking is good with other people. Fucking is the best with Phil. 

“Phil,” Dan pants, “fuck. Fuck.”

“Can I come inside you?” Phil murmurs, his hips erratic. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Dan fucks himself harder back onto Phil’s cock, biting his lip.

Phil’s movements are steady and hard as he thrusts into Dan, until he freezes and goes still as he comes.

Dan rides Phil through his orgasm until he can feel the come leaking out of his ass and then he waits for Phil to get off, not expecting warm lips to slide over his cock.

“A-ah!” Dan gasps, his fingers fisting into the bed sheets. 

Phil looks up at him with those giant blue eyes and Dan about loses it right then, moving his hips to fuck into Phil’s mouth harder. 

“I’m going to come, get off.” Dan suggests, his eyes closing as he tries to keep his thighs on the bed.

Phil doesn’t obey, holding Dan down as he hums around his cock until Dan’s coming against the back of his throat and letting out a string of moans mixed with expletives. 

Phil swallows hard and then laughs, making a face at the come left in his mouth. “Been a while since I did that.”

“I told you to get off.” Dan shrugs, “Thank you, though.”

“Did you just thank me for sex?” Phil coughs. 

“You’re supposed to show appreciation for the small things.” Dan winks.

“Hey!” Phil pouts, “No more sex for you.”

“Of come on, if I wanted to go for a round two right now you’d say yes.” Dan rolls his eyes.

“Do you?”

“Maybe.” Dan pushes himself to his knees, crawling across the bed to kiss Phil’s left nipple, swirling his tongue around it before grazing it with his teeth. His skin is salty and warm; it reminds Dan of Jamaica. 

“Let me get the lube, it fell on the floor.” Phil gasps.

“See?” Dan pulls back. “You can’t withhold sex from me.”

“You’re feisty.” 

“Besides, I would be up for round two but my breathing is a bit rough. I hoped it’d get better once I came down but it’s still difficult. I’m going to use the oxygen thing for a bit.” Dan climbs off the bed, the faint redness of hand prints from where Phil got handsy clear as day on his ass. 

“Are you saying I took your breath away?” Phil stands as well, joining Dan by the door where he is looking out onto the storm.

“Always.” Dan smiles sadly, turning back to kiss Phil again. “You taste like cum.” 

“You’re telling me.” Phil kisses Dan again anyway, a wave of sadness washing over him. 

“Let’s shower, and then we can go to bed.” Dan feels it too, he must have. 

“Okay.” 

As they lie in the clean bed after the shower, Phil reads and Dan focuses on the tube in his nose keeping him from passing out. He watches Phil in a way Phil must know, or at least feel, like the way the breeze is cool and salty on their skin as it thunders over the ocean. 

And as he focuses on the lines in Phil’s skin, and the way Phil’s tummy pokes out from his boxers ever-so-slightly, and the abused glasses pressed up his nose, he thinks about quotes. 

“That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence” 

Goddamn The Fault in Our Stars is pretentious; Dan wonders why it feels like John wrote about him.

Outside, it storms. Inside, they sleep.


	9. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm a goner, somebody catch my breath." - Goner, 21 Pilots

There is a period, lingering but ultimately brief in the hasty new months of Autumn, where Dan is okay most days. There are days they call “shit days” to each other and “sick days” to everyone else they’ve told, where Dan can barely leave his bed. Those days they’re just best friends, because Dan doesn’t want to be touched. Those days he can barely handle being loved at all.

Augustus Waters would be proud as Phil routinely quotes Vonnegut at Dan, stroking his hair lightly and repeating, “This, too, shall pass” at every possible moment. 

They make it through DAPGOOSE; they make it through TATINOF Europe. What used to be accomplishing turns into “surviving.” It’s still fun, it still goes well, but with every passing day it gets worse. People begin to notice something isn’t right.

Dan’s hair doesn’t fall out completely, but instead thins and recedes in a way that’s not noticeable at a glance, not noticeable in the grainy webcam during liveshows, but noticeable in high definition videos. They announce a brief hold on PINOF 8 at the sharp beginning of the second week of December and things move quickly from there.

Phil suggests he tells their audience, a topic of conversation breached lightly. “Not in like, a video, but maybe just tell them you’re sick. They’ve noticed you look worse, Dan.”

“Let them wonder.” Dan groans, throwing his head back on the sofa. 

Dan’s tired. Today has been a day hovering somewhere between a “shit” day and an “okay” day, a day that resembles his very worst days back in October. Now it’s just another day, another hurdle to get over. 

The last thing he wants to do right now is to have an argument with his boyfriend, his best friend, his other half in this life that’s trying to drag him under. But like most things in this life, he doesn’t quite get what he wants.

He runs a hand across his head, his hair coarse and thin, and grimaces. “I’m hideous.”

Phil sighs and lets his head fall towards Dan, frowning. “You’re not.”

But Dan is, deep inside his mind. He showers every few days, when he feels so gross it’s as if the cancer is leaking out of every pore on his body and sticking grimy and thick on his skin. Today, he spent too long looking in the mirror. He has a vivid memory of what he looked like in June in the bright lights of stage mirrors, healthy and pink and strong and the contrast had him on his knees, thin and weak and tired.

The cold in the apartment hits him bone-deep and he tries to bury himself farther into the horn hoodie that fits again; it is even loose around his stomach. He swears during the Halloween baking video it was snug.

“Hate this.” Dan says softly, reaching out a hand to find Phil’s.

He doesn’t know specifically to what he is referring. He might mean the cancer. He might mean the chemotherapy. He might mean the way his lungs are giving up on him while taking everything he has left.

Phil takes his hand. “This too shall pass, Dan.” He quotes, for the umpteenth time.

“It’s going to pass, and it’s going to take me with it.” Dan barely whispers. 

Dan scraps his bucket list. 

“It was crap.” Dan shakes his head, moving the file to the recycling bin and starting anew. “Time for a new one.”

Phil smiles at him with narrowed eyebrows over the edge of his book, the slightest look of confusion. “Another?”

“Yeah.” Dan shrugs.

“It’s late, you have to be up early.” Phil pats Dan’s bed as Dan leans back in the butt chair, meters away, oblivious. 

“Tomorrow I figure out how I’m doing.” Dan smiles, but nerves bubble under the surface.

Dr. Carter had explained that the tumours were too large to completely remove, but they wanted to see how Dan reacted to chemotherapy before they try to remove parts of them, and then eventually they could remove the rest. It would be pointless to remove them and take that risk if the chemo did nothing. Or, that’s how Dan interpreted the jargon. 

If the chemo had been preventing the formation of new cells, then Dan could be operated on as early as January. Next month. He could quit chemo by summer, and then with regular checkups he could be back to normal by this time next year. The way things are looking, he has a chance. 

“You’re going to be okay, Dan.” Phil smiles from the bed, and it breaks his own heart how much he believes it.

Instead of making a list, Dan makes a Tumblr post. He drafts it, reads it to Phil, re-drafts it, and then posts it, finally. 

Hey internet, 

I’ve been quiet lately, as many of you have noticed. I apologize for the lack of danisnotonfire videos, but I assure you they are not done. I was going to make a video about this, actually, but I decided it was better in this format. I’ve been having health issues, and I think for a little while I’m going to just focus on recovering. I’m endlessly thankful for your support, see you soon guys.

The response is instant and heart-warming, but it makes anxiety settle deep in his gut and wrap itself around his fucked up esophagus. He wishes he could say it makes this all too real, but it’s been reality for months and he’s well settled into this home. 

“Phil.” Dan says out loud, now sat beside Phil on his bed, “Let’s run away.” 

“Run away?” Phil laughs, shutting his book and setting it on the bedside table.

“Yeah, when I’m cured. Let’s just go somewhere and get the fuck out.” 

“Dan.” Phil reaches out and ghosts his fingers over the bare expanse of Dan’s arm.

“What? You don’t want to run away with me?” Dan shifts so they’re making eye contact and stares Phil down; he focuses on the specks of light reflecting in Phil’s eyes.

“We did. We ran away to Florida for a few days. We had fun, remember?” Phil’s tracing circles on Dan’s arm.

The lights are low and Dan’s got his oxygen tube nestled in his nose; it’s a comfortable constant these days that makes it easier to breathe. Easier to be alive. 

“That was for DAPGOOSE, I want to run away for months.” Dan frowns.

“We ran away to America for two months, and Australia for one. Japan for a week. Dan, this isn’t about getting away.” Phil’s thumb traces the outline of Dan’s frown.

Dan goes silent and stares blankly at Phil, his lip trembling the slightest bit.

“Are you scared?” Phil breathes, cupping Dan’s face.

“No.” Dan says instantly, shaking Phil off of him, “I just. The unknown is so daunting.” 

“You’ll find out tomorrow. In nine hours.” Phil says in a way that is meant to be reassuring, but sends panic down Dan’s spine.

“I’d like to go alone this time.” Dan says.

“Oh. Okay. Why?”

“If it’s good news I want you to find out from me. And if it’s bad.” Dan smiles, sad and trembling, “I still want you to find out from me.”

“Okay. It will be good.” Phil scoots closer to kiss Dan on the lips, gentle in the low light. Dan expects Phil to suggest sleep but the kiss deepens and before they know it Phil is straddling Dan and they’re all hands and tongues and soft noises.

It’s not elaborate, it’s not something that’s incredibly passionate or exciting, but it’s comforting and they manage to come at the same time for the first time ever, which is… a little exciting. 

And then Dan falls asleep before they can clean up, which is a problem for morning Dan and Phil, truthfully.

Morning arrives too early and too bright. Sunlight kisses the room as it pours through the windows of Dan’s bedroom and it reminds Dan of early Spring, instead of mid-Autumn.

“Phil.” Dan shoves at his boyfriend, yawning into his hand.

“What?” Phil blinks into the obnoxious light of day.

“I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.” Dan says as he scoots from bed and begins pulling on clothes. The t-shirt is Phil’s, the jeans are his, the boxers are probably his, but they’re clean so it doesn’t really matter. 

“Mm, love you.” Phil’s eyes close again and Dan smiles. 

“Love you too.” 

The train to the hospital is quiet, this early on a Saturday. A older man sits across from Dan and stares blankly out the window, his eyes swollen with age and dripping down towards his cheekbones.

Dan’s thin, and pale. His eyes probably look about the same as the man’s from the lack of sleep and general effects of being sick, and his frown is hidden behind a white mask that he’s not allowed to leave the house without. It makes it even harder to breathe, which is Dan’s main objection. 

He doesn’t care about his appearance. He doesn’t care about being spotted- or even how people avoid him like he’s got the bloody plague. He grabs his phone and impulsively clicks on his iMessage conversation with Phil, his thumbs lingering over the keyboard before he quickly re-locks his phone and tries to focus on the music in his ears. 

The people in the office know him by name; they offer him decaf coffee from the office pot. (Caffeine makes the veins smaller, makes chemotherapy more difficult). He doesn’t want it but accepts for Rose, who always appreciates a warm drink. 

And when he’s settled down and waiting for a nurse- hopefully Jackie or Simon today as he’s been meaning to tell them he finished Black Mirror- he’s shocked to see Dr. Carter arrive. 

“Hi, Doc. Haven’t seen you in a bit.” Dan smiles, plays dumb. Acts like he forgot what today was. 

“Hi, Dan. I know I haven’t seen you in a few appointments, but last time they drew blood and did some tests that- actually you, you know all this. I’m just the messenger, today.” Dr. Carter says softy.

“So.” Dan smiles, nervous and fake plastered on his face. “Is it good news?”

Dr. Carter frowns and sits down on the end of the bed, shuffling the files in her hand softly. “Dan.”

“Yeah?” Dan forces himself to respond.

“Despite the chemotherapy for the past two months, the tumours have grown. And at a bit of an alarming rate. They’re pushing at not only the lobes of your lungs, but your superior vena cava as well, which is causing you to have some arrhythmia in your heart and swelling in your extremities.” She is calm.

“Okay, so the chemo didn’t work.” Dan clears his throat and feels like everything he can’t say is suck in the thick phlegm clinging to his tonsils. 

“No. And at this point, even if we do radiation, or drugs, or pray,” She takes a breath and all Dan can busy his mind with is thinking about how he could never ever be a doctor, not now and not in some other lifetime where he’s going to be okay, “your heart will give out before we can remove them, if you would even survive that operation.”

“Okay.” Dan whispers, his eyes locked on the floor. 

“Do you have any questions?” She puts a hand on Dan’s thigh for comfort.

“What would you do, if you were me?” Dan puts his hand over hers and squeezes, wishing it were the big, steady hand of Phil instead of the delicate hand of his doctor with the engagement ring stabbing him between his fingers. 

“I think I might stop treatment, go somewhere warm. Spend time with people I love.” 

“Okay. Do I have to make any decisions right now?” Dan closes his eyes but keeps his voice steady.

“No, take as much time as you need. As of now, I’ve cancelled your chemo appointments. Let me know if you want me to connect you to a radiation specialist.” Dr. Carter gives his hand one last squeeze and stands, “I’m- I’m so sorry.”

She leaves Dan alone with his thoughts and he can’t stop staring at the ground.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Rose says from light years away, somewhere off in the far away distance where Dan cannot hear or see her.

“I’m dying, Rose.” Dan forces himself to say.

“Me too.” Rose laughs, hoarse.

“I mean, um, I’m stopping treatment.” Dan feels like he should be screaming, or crying, but all he feels is the freezing air of the hospital nipping at his skin.

“Oh, shit.” She says, and then respectfully says nothing else.

Dan doesn’t know if he’s thankful.

He told Phil he would take the train home and be there by one, maybe with lunch. Instead, he tucks his thumbs under the straps of his backpack and wanders around the city. His mask is left in a bin on some avenue. 

He ducks into a pub and about laughs at how stereotypical everyone is. Who the fuck is in a pub at noon on a Saturday, anyway? He sits down at the bar looking out of place in his graphic tee and galaxy bag (because come on, rocking your own merch isn’t lame when it’s subtle), but orders vodka Collins and a shot of tequila with a tight-mouthed smile.

“Want to see the lunch specials?” The gruff bar tender crosses his arms, staring Dan down. He’s the only one at the bar.

“Nope.” Dan grimaces as he wipes his mouth from the shot, swallowing hard.

“You running away?” The man asks.

“I’m twenty-five.” Dan laughs, the heat from the shot creeping down his chest.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t be runnin’.” The man wipes down the stretches of empty counter-top and Dan watches, nursing his drink.

“I’m dying.” Dan says when he’s worked up the courage.

“Dying, eh?” 

“Yeah.” Dan buries his face, warm, into his hands. “Dead soon.” 

“Who’s out to kill you?” Greg, Dan notes from the schedule over the bar keep, laughs.

“Cancer.” Dan grins, and he doesn’t know why. It’s that weird part of him that is trying to dispel the horrified beast inside of him by making everyone else uncomfortable.

“That’ll get ya.” Greg pauses wiping, the rag suddenly clenched in his fist. It’s as if for the first time since Dan arrived Greg is noticing how young Dan actually is. “Do you know how long you have?”

Dan wishes he knew. Or he really, really doesn’t. He presses his right palm over his heart and tries to count the beats as if he will be able to count how many seconds until it stops for good. “No idea. Not too much longer, now. Few months.” 

Dan buys five more shots. By the time o’clock rolls around, he’s sideways on the bar tracing designs into the glass-covered wood.

“I’m famous.” Dan slurs.

“Sure.” Greg laughs, keeping Dan quiet and entertained in the corner of the now semi-busy pub.

“I am! Dan Howell.” Dan laughs, his cheek against the cool surface. “I just toured America, and Aust-rialia-ia. And Europe and… and Canada.” 

“What do you do, Famous Dan Howell?” 

“I entertain people. Make them happier, I guess. Sold out shows, you know.” Dan swallows his smile when he feels a wave of nausea hit him.

“Let me know if you ever play in London.” Greg smiles, soft and sincere. 

“I did. At the London palladium.” Dan frowns, tapping his finger on the edge of one of the shot glasses and peering at the salt on the edge of his finger. 

“Listen, maybe you should lay off the drinks for a bit.” Greg puts his arms on the bar and crouches down to be eye-level with Dan. “I genuinely have no idea if anything you’re saying is true.”

Dan kind of wants to kiss him, and this reminds him that Phil is probably worried sick.

“Fuck.” Dan spurts, sitting up, “Phil.”

“Who is Phil?” Greg shakes his head, throwing a towel over his shoulder. 

“My best friend.” Dan pulls his phone out of his pocket and there are four missed calls and two missed texts. “Fuck.”

“You should go to him.” 

“I need to. We live together. I’m going to go find- go find him.” Dan stands and uses the bar as support. “Wait, how much is it?” 

“Uh, sixty two pounds.” Greg furrows his eyebrows, printing out a small check.

“Here,” Dan pulls a hundred pound note out of his pocket, and then another, “This is a lot more than that. Have a good, long life Greg.” 

“Woah, man, you’re plastered, you don’t want to give me that much.” Greg tries to hang one back, but Dan laughs. It’s loud and a few customers turn to look.

“I’m dying, and I’m famous. And rich. And dying.” Dan laughs again, hysterical with a side of tequila to make it sound just normal enough, “Goodbye, Greg.” 

Dan wanders out into the street and steadies himself with a hand pressed against an old building. 

“Hi.” A homeless man grins, toothy and wet.

“Hi.” Dan echoes, ignoring his instinct to ignore and move on.

“They call me Jack. Are you okay?” The man asks as the world spins before Dan’s eyes.

“I am. Are you okay?” Dan lies, the words thick and lost in the noise of London streets. 

“I am.” Jack laughs and picks up the paper bag beside him and takes a swig before holding it out to Dan, “’wan some?”

“I’ve had enough for today, thank you Jack.” Dan says quite truthfully as the bus arrives, screeching noisily to a halt. 

On the bus, Dan realizes that he has no clue where he is going, or how to get home. With drunken acceptance, he rings Phil.

“Dan! Where the hell are you? I’ve been worried sick, the clinic couldn’t even tell me if they had seen you and I called the hospital thinking something had-“ 

“Phil.” Dan says, and his voice breaks.

In the middle of the bus, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a life.

“Dan.” Is all Phil says back and he knows, oh god he knows.

“Can you please come pick me up?” Dan whimpers, his hand in front of his mouth so the people around him don’t see the way his lips quiver.

“Of course, where are you?” 

“I’ll get off at the next stop and send you my location.” Dan slurs, half intoxicated and half trying to be calm.

“Are you drunk?” Phil says after a pause.

“I’ll see you soon.” Is all Dan manages before hanging up and shoving his phone in the pocket of his coat. 

Half an hour later a car arrives with Phil in the back seat and Dan joins him wordlessly and they don’t talk on the way home.

They get dropped off on the street adjacent to their own because after seven years of this they’re afraid to be followed home. Phil glances around for people every two seconds as he drags Dan to their building and through the door to the staircase.

It’s small and dark and Dan’s leaning against the railing like he’s a ghost and the only human part left in him is keeping him from fading straight through the drywall. 

“Dan.” Phil says breathlessly, terrified, “What did you learn today?”

And sure, any one of their neighbours could walk through that door and interrupt, crash this emotional wreck of a party, but Phil’s hands shake and he can’t keep it in any longer.

“I didn’t,” Dan lies, “Too scared, I skipped out.”

“Oh,” Phil says, his face drooping with relief. 

“I’m sorry.” Dan murmurs as Phil envelopes him in his arms and presses a closed-lipped kiss to Dan’s neck. 

“I’m glad you’re safe.” Phil murmurs, his breath hot against Dan’s neck.

They meander up the four flights of stairs, stopping for Dan to catch his breath, enter the apartment, and they end up on the couch kissing.

“Baby,” Phil breathes as he slides his hands in the back pockets of Dan’s jeans, squeezing Dan’s bum from where he lies beneath him.

“Mmm,” Dan hums, grinding forward into Phil’s crotch as his hands grip Phil’s hips. 

“Do you feel okay?” Phil manages over the tiny gasps coming from Dan every time they rock together.

“Never, but I’ll live.” Dan laughs, because he doesn’t really feel all that bad right now. He feels pretty good with the alcohol in his system, pretty good because it’s been four days since he’s had chemo and his body functions better without the chemicals. 

“You sure?” Phil checks, but his hands are gripped on Dan’s ass and he’s holding him down, thrusting upwards in a desperate attempt for friction.

“Phil,” Dan laughs again, his fingers moving to pull Phil’s shirt over his head, “Shut up.” 

“Oxygen?” Phil grins, his pupils dilated, swallowing the blue.

Dan considers, before rolling his eyes, “You don’t think that ruins the sexiness?” 

“I think you’re sexier when you can breathe.” Phil sits up, and Dan tumbles back onto the couch, “Wait here.” 

“Or,” Dan stands, his hands unbuttoning his jeans to free his throbbing cock of its fabric prison, “we could move things to the bedroom.”

“That’s fine!” Phil shouts from Dan’s bedroom where he’s setting up the oxygen tank Dan left a mess the night before. 

When it’s set up Phil drapes it over Dan’s head and tucks it behind his ears, while Dan rolls his eyes. 

“Beautiful.” Phil grins, “Now lay down.” 

Dan flings himself onto his bed and wanks himself as Phil gathers the lube and towel.  
“Stop, stretch yourself, please.” Phil tosses the lube at Dan as he removes his own clothes.

“Always so polite.” Dan sticks his tongue out and stretches himself as requested, one finger, then two, and then three and a small moan. 

“Ready?” Phil asks when he takes Dan’s thighs under his arms and presses Dan back into the mattress. 

“Yes, please, fuck.” 

Phil lines himself up and presses in, closing his eyes as he notes how tight Dan is. “Jesus.”

“Go, go.” Dan squints, the stretch sending burning through his ass despite the lube Phil always over-uses. 

“Shhhhite.” Phil laughs breathily. He bottoms out as Dan’s thighs press against his chest. 

Dan mumbles something incoherent but rocks his ass against Phil’s cock. Phil starts fucking into Dan slowly, but increases his pace as Dan’s mouth falls open.

“Good?” Phil pants, the mattress squeaking beneath him as he grips onto Dan’s thighs. 

“G-great.” Dan nods, his hard member leaking against his stomach. He twists his hands into the bed sheets.

Phil slows, and then pulls all the way out. Dan whimpers and attempts to sit up, frowning. Before he can even open his mouth Phil is thrusting back in at full force directly into Dan’s prostate, throwing Dan back onto the bed. 

“AH-h!” Dan gasps, reaching up for Phil before settling on covering his own mouth. 

“I’m going to come.” Phil whispers, his pace quickening. 

“Y-yeah,” Dan nods, fucking himself back onto Phil harder. 

Phil closes his eyes and thrusts quickly before his movements still and he’s coming hard into Dan. Dan rides Phil through the orgasm as he strokes his own cock, cum spilling over his stomach as he orgasms moments later. 

Both exhausted, they collapse onto one another. 

“That was good.” Phil chuckles sleepily, “Let’s clean up.”

“I’m going to shower.” Dan runs a finger through the cum on his stomach and then wiggles his ass and feels the sticky, wet cum seeping out of his hole. It’s not altogether unpleasant. 

“Want me to join?” Phil closes his eyes.

“No, I want you to go make dinner.”

“You get to-“ Phil starts to argue, but gives up, “fine. Have a nice shower, I’m wearing your shirt.”

“I’ve never managed to stop you before.” Dan says as he grabs a towel and heads towards the bathroom, the oxygen tube left by the bed and a smile on his face.

Phil goes and makes dinner. Dan gets out of the shower with red eyes and raw skin and Phil doesn’t mention it. Dan barely touches the black bean burgers Phil made and Phil doesn’t mention it. 

It’s pitch black at half five, because the sun gives up this late in the year and drowns the world in darkness while they’re eating dinner. Dan runs his finger over the edge of the plate again and again until Phil reaches over a hand and places it on Dan’s, stilling the motion.

“I’m getting sick.” Phil says softly between bites, “My throat is sore.” 

“That’s not good.” Dan shrugs, poking at his bun.

“No, not for you. I don’t want you to catch this, or have to wear a mask around the house so I think I’m going to go spend a few days with my parents.” Phil speaks with his eyes to the table, fully aware of how Dan will react.

“No, please stay here.” Dan replies instantaneously. 

“Dan.” Phil’s eyes are icy.

“I’ll wear the mask- I don’t want to be alone.” Dan whines, dropping any pretense of eating.

“No, I don’t want to get you sick. It could be the end of you, and I can’t handle that. I’ll go away for three or four days until this is over and then I’ll return. We’ve had a lot of each other recently, a break will be good.” 

“Fine.” Dan says tersely, crossing his arms.

“You’re kind of a brat.” Phil rolls his eyes.

“What?”

“I’m doing this for your own good, and you’ll still be mad at me until I return.” Phil piles his silver wear onto his plate and stands, Dan following suit. 

“I’m upset about missing my boyfriend, who is leaving me. When I’m dying.” Dan scoffs, loudly dropping his plate in the sink. 

“You’re not dying.” Phil drops his fork with the same intensity, throwing a sharp glare at Dan.

“Maybe I am.” Dan says, and his voice cracks with the wave of fear that washes over him. 

“You’re not.” Phil’s eyes soften at the sound and he steps towards Dan.

“Phil,” Dan’s lie pins him to the wall and he can barely speak, “I. Didn’t skip out today.” 

“Oh.” 

“Dr. Carter, uh,” Dan swallows hard, tears burning behind his eyelids, “told me the chemo didn’t work. Isn’t, uh, working. The tumours are… worse.” 

Phil doesn’t respond, but his eyes speak for him. There’s love, overpowering, but beneath that there’s a lot of fear that Dan isn’t used to seeing. 

“Please say something.” Dan whispers, a tear escaping and running down his face, falling into the crevice of his nose. 

“That doesn’t mean you won’t be okay. That’s not a death sentence.” Phil shakes his head, swallowing but turning towards the dishes, hastily putting the milk back in the fridge. His hand misses and it collides with the side of the shelf and the carton falls to the floor. 

“Oh, shit. Let me get a rag.” Dan says.

“No, it’s okay.” Phil says automatically, reaching for the roll of paper towels. “It’s okay.” He drops to his knees and starts mopping up the milk, without upturning the carton. 

“Phil, it’s still on its side.” Dan freezes.

Phil just keeps at it, his hands shaking hard against the floor, obvious even from where Dan is standing. 

“Phil, Phil, look at me.” Dan whispers, firmly, sinking to his knees, “Baby, look at me.” 

“It’s okay,” Phil insists, cleaning up the milk with an already soaked through towel, staring at the cold tile floor. The milk is soaking into the knees of his trousers. 

“Phil, I’m still here, now.” Dan’s voice shatters and breaks, he reaches out to stop Phil and Phil freezes, his glasses fogged and his lower lip caught between his teeth. 

“It’s okay, it’s just milk.” Phil’s voice is wrecked; he falls back onto his thighs. 

“I’m so sorry.” Dan pulls Phil into his lap, both of them covered in cold liquid. “I love you so much.”

“It’s going to be okay.” Phil repeats as he buries his head into Dan’s neck and lets out a broken sob.

They sit like that, crying into one another, for a long time, until the milk chills them to the bone and Dan drags Phil to the shower. They shower together and Dan leaves to go clean up the kitchen when Phil is getting in pajamas. The kitchen is trashed. 

Dan wipes up the spill and Phil stands in the doorway in pajama bottoms that are too big and a t-shirt that used to be his, Dan thinks, but he doesn’t really remember. When it’s clean enough, they walk to Phil’s bedroom hand-in-hand.

If everything were okay, they’d probably fuck it out again. Everything’s a little easier when there’s an orgasm to distract from it, but Dan’s more tired than he should be and Phil’s not spoken in thirty minutes. 

But everything isn’t okay. 

The next morning, they try so hard to not talk about it. 

“It might snow on Christmas.” Phil says, the first words spoken.

“You’ve said that for the last seven years, it’s not going to happen.” Dan responds, a bit harsher than intended. Silence falls.

Phil drinks his coffee black, not by choice, with too much sugar. They sit side-by-side in the lounge and for once there are no electronics between them. 

“I’m stopping treatment.” Dan manages, and Phil takes a sip of coffee.

“Okay.” 

“You’re my power of Attorney.” Dan coughs, “I thought about giving that to my parents, but I want you to make any calls.” 

“Okay.” 

“You get all the money I own, you know that. It’s been ours for five years, anyway.” 

“Okay.”

“You still going to go see your parents?” Dan frowns from across the table.

“How long do you have?” Phil braves.

“Maybe a month.” Dan shrugs.

“No.” 

“What if I come?” Dan suggests, knocking his calf against Phil's in a way that's meant to be comforting.

“That would be nice.”

“So it’s settled then.” Dan nods, “When will we leave?”

“No more doctor’s appointments?” Phil whispers, like he doesn’t want to hear the response he knows is coming.

“Nope.” 

“Okay.” 

“I thought ‘who cares’ was supposed to be our ‘okay’.” Dan smiles, nudges Phil with his foot.

“Why are you joking around?” Phil asks, sincerely.

“Phil, that’s who we are. You know that. We’re a comedy duo- we have millions of subscribers for a reason. I get it, I’m dying. We’re in a goddamn real life fanfiction and it’s really fucking scary- but we’re still us.” Dan begs. 

“What the hell will I do without you?” Phil pushes his hair off his forehead, “We’ve spent every waking moment with each other for the last three years; I’m not even sure who I am when I’m not the second name in a sequence behind yours.” 

“You’re Phil Lester, Amazingphil.” Dan smiles, “The Amazing Phil. And you’re going to be just fine.” 

They leave for Manchester in a haze of fog on a train filled with tired people at eight in the morning. Dan is wearing a mask per Phil’s request, but Dan’s preoccupied on what Phil’s parents will think when they see him.

They are waiting at the station when the doors open and Dan slides his mask to his neck and embraces them both. 

“Dan!” Catherine exclaims, but her voice is soft, like if she’s too loud she’ll shatter him. 

“Dad, Mum, thanks for meeting us here.” Phil looks so different as well, in a way you would only notice if you hadn’t seen the Phil from before in a while. He’s lost weight and his cheeks are sunken. 

“No worries,” His dad says with a sad smile. 

And that’s about all Dan gets from the Lesters- sad smiles. In the car home Dan sits in the front and talks to Mr. Lester about politics, mostly American. They’re in the middle of a heated discussion when Dan overhears Phil and his mum conversing in anxious whispers in the back.

“How’s he doing?” Catherine worries.

Phil’s voice drops past a whisper and into something too quiet for Dan to make out. There’s a brief spell of silence in the car as dad drives, Dan tries to listen, Phil waits for a response, and mum takes in what she was just told.

“Oh.” She says so softly and breathily that Dan wants to lean back and strangle Phil for telling her. He settles for a sharp glare in the rear-view at his boyfriend.

“You know, I’m right here.” Dan mumbles, not wanting to start something but also thinking that the something has already been started.

“Dan, honey.” His mum coos, but falters.

“Catherine, let’s keep things happy.” His dad corrects, but instead of happy the car falls into an awkward, suffocating silence. 

Thankfully, but the time they’re headed down the road Dan’s had memorized for seven years and the one Phil scrapped his knees on as a kid and learned how to drive around every turn, it’s dissipated. 

Dan walks softly through the house and can’t help but think about Phil Is Not On Fire and the six following videos that shaped their careers. The videos that featured when they were on stage in front of sold-out shows, the videos that haunt them a little but guide them a little more the way the past tends to do.

“I’ve missed your bedroom.” Dan falls back onto the bed and wonders when the duvet turned from green to this beige. 

“Parents have changed it a bit.” Phil smirks at the bed sheets and the posters that have been taken down and put in a corner.

“Weren’t they supposed to sell this place?” Dan rolls over onto his arms.

“Yeah, but I threatened to buy it. They didn’t take me seriously until I showed them my bank account status.” Phil’s tongue slips out of his mouth the way it does when Phil is proud of himself for being cunning and witty- considers himself the most hilarious person on earth. 

“You should have.” Dan muses.

Phil puts their bags in front of the closet and messes with his hair in the mirror, “I’d rather buy them a condo in Florida, you know?”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“I’d miss them so far away.” Phil admits, finally lying on the bed beside Dan.

“Go with them. Escape England for a bit.” 

“With Trump as president, no thanks.” Phil laughs, but he rolls towards Dan and looks sadder than anticipated. 

“Yeah, true. Maybe you could buy them a house in Mexico. Somewhere warm and calm. You should, uh, visit, you know.” Dan’s voice fades, “Be warm. Happy.”

“You could come, too.” Phil says, and of course he had to say this, because he’s Phil.

“You’re an idiot.’ Dan coughs a laugh, showing affection in the most comfortable way when it comes to them.

“How do you feel?”

“Pretty shit.” Dan admits, feeling about ten seconds from falling asleep. “Tired. Sore. Tired again.”

“I’m still getting sick. I’ll sleep downstairs tonight.” Phil frowns, as unwilling to say it as Dan is to accept it.

“Okay.” Dan says, because he doesn’t want to argue.

They take a nap together, and by nap it means Dan slept and Phil played his DS with Dan tucked into his chest, drooling open-mouthed. 

They’re that way until two, when Phil’s mum carefully knocks on the door.

“Dear?” She says into the slight crack.

“He’s sleeping!” Phil half-whispers, gently pushing Dan off him and moving from the bed.

“Oh, I won’t bother you then.” She says, seeming relieved that it was only a nap she intruded upon. 

“I wouldn’t mind a coffee.” Phil smiles, slipping out of the room and enveloping his mum in a hug.

“Well I can do that for you.” She smiles and they end up in the kitchen with a tea and a coffee.

They talk for a long time. Catherine notices the new lines on her son’s face and still, even when he’s almost thirty, it’s strange talking to him like he’s any other adult. 

“What are you planning on doing if… the worst happens?” She phrases the question carefully.

“I don’t want to think about that yet.” Phil shakes his head, “We’ve got time.”

“You thinking of finalizing anything beforehand, marriage or the likes?” 

“That’s never really been our style.” Phil messes with his mug, his eyes moving from the table to the stairs. “I wouldn’t mind it, maybe.” 

“I always knew you two would end up together. Proper soulmates, if they exist at all.” She smiles and reaches out to place a hand over Phil’s. “Is Dan feeling okay today?”

“He’s okay, not great. Despite the bad news he seems to be recovering slightly.” 

“Take care of him, Phil.” 

Phil smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Always, mum.” 

They wake Dan up when it’s nearly four. 

“It’s too early.” Dan grunts, burying himself into Phil’s duvet. 

“Come on. Up and Adam.” Phil pokes Dan’s butt.

“Up and Adam?” Dan peeks his head out.

“Yes?” Phil cocks his head, “Up and Adam.”

“How does that make sense, Phil?” Dan shakes his head.

“I don’t know, it’s just an expression.” Phil shrugs, pulling the duvet off Dan.

“Up and at ‘em, Phil. Like, at them.” Dan grins and sits up. 

Phil hurumph’s and throws himself onto the bed. “I was wondering who Adam was and why everyone should wake up and do him.” 

“Phil.” Dan laughs sharply.

“What?” 

“You’re a perv.” Dan groans playfully. “What are we doing today?”

“It’s already almost dark out, you slept through the day.” Phil leans forward and presses their lips together.

“Mm,” Dan kisses back, linking their fingers together. 

“But if you want we can go look at Christmas lights with my parents.” Phil murmurs between kisses.

“I’d like that.” Dan says through a smile.

It’s pitch black and freezing cold as the Lester clan plus Dan walks through the strings of light on the streets. They left the car near a park and had been strolling along for half an hour.

Dan and Phil hold hands in the darkness, broken up by strings of red and white lights. Around them children run in giant puffy coats, their mums shouting from a block away. 

Phil’s parents are ahead, because Dan feels a little dizzy and he needs to go slowly for now. They hold hands because they can’t be seen, and also because they both really don’t care anymore. 

It’s bitter cold on exposed faces but it’s also peaceful and beautiful. 

Phil swings their hands for a second before stopping in front of a big tree. It’s decorated about half way up, the rest of the tree a dark silhouette against the charcoal sky. “Looks like they needed someone taller.”

“It’s still pretty.” Dan muses, squeezing Phil’s hand.

“We didn’t set up the rave tree this year.” Phil frowns, to himself. 

“No, but we still have time. We could make a festive day in the life again.” 

“You know I don’t like duplicate videos.” Phil grins, knocking their hands against Dan’s thigh. 

“Okay, Mr. Weird-Kid.” Dan teases. 

“Hey,” Phil hesitates, still staring up at the half-lit tree, “marry me?” 

Dan freezes, his hand stilling in Phil’s. “What?” 

Phil swallows hard and turns towards Dan, taking both his hands and sinking to one knee on the cold grass. The moisture seeps through the knee of his jeans and he takes a deep breath. “Dan Howell,” 

Dan smiles, unable to help himself.

“I have loved you, my entire life. I didn’t know who I was until I knew you. I didn’t know I was lonely until I met you.” It starts to snow around them and Dan’s anchored by the blue eyes looking up at him. It’s entirely too cheesy. 

“Phil I-“ 

“I’m not done.” Phil laughs nervously, shaking slightly in the cold air, “I know I’m shit at telling you I love you, I was back when we first met and I was in 2012 and I am now, but you loved me anyway. You loved me through every ridiculously long flight, every headache, every open cabinet door, and every sock left in the lounge.”

Dan’s hands are occupied so he can’t catch the tears dripping down his face. 

“I don’t think,” Phil swallows, “I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone who loves me as much as you do. And I don’t think I’ll love- I’ll love anyone as much as I love you. So if you’ll have me, I’d love to be yours forever.”

“Phil-“ Dan laughs through tears, pulling Phil to his feet and kissing him sloppily, “Of course. Of course I’ll marry you, what the fuck.” 

Off to the side, someone is clapping softly, it may be Phil’s mum, or his dad, or maybe some strangers who will never know the ending of this story. 

But as the snow falls and the harsh colour of winter is disrupted by the light and love of this December night, the ending of this story doesn’t really matter, does it?

That night Phil doesn’t sleep on the couch, they sleep together on the shit mattress that has existed for longer than they have been on this Earth and wake up to the soft morning light of day in each others’ arms. 

“Good morning, I feel like shit.” Phil groans, his throat aching and his head tight. 

“Ugh,” Dan ignores the way his head spins as he shoves back. “Don’t get me sick.”

“I was trying, but you insisted I sleep with you.” Phil coughs.

“You just had to go and propose, what was I supposed to do? Let my fiancé abandon me for the couch?” Dan scoffs. 

“The couch wouldn’t argue with me at eight in the morning,” Phil groans, burying his head in a pillow. 

“I’m going to go make coffee.” Dan stretches and stands.

“Bring me three cups.” 

“You’ll get one, to start.”

“You know how I like it.” 

“Yes, Phil, I know how you like it.”

Phil doesn’t see Dan sway slightly as he leaves the room. Phil’s almost asleep again when he hears the crash. He jolts back awake and frowns, brushing it off. Then, his mum is yelling. 

“Phil!” 

Phil jolts from the bed and pulls on jeans, the terror in his mum’s voice dragging him from his room to where Catherine is standing over Dan. Dan’s crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, eyes open but staring blankly at the ceiling. 

“Dan, honey.” She puts her hand to his forehead, “Phil, I heard the crash and came running, did he fall?” 

“I- I don’t know, Dan, Dan,” Phil drops to his knees and puts his hands on either side of Dan’s face, “Dan.” 

“Mm?” Dan hums, eyes blank and dilated as he stares into the distance.

“Fuck,” Phil curses, uncaring that his mom is there, “We have to call 999.” 

“You call, I’ll get your father.” His mum says.

Phil’s hands fumble for his phone and he pulls it from his pajamas, using the “emergency dial” option for the first time. He shakily dials 9-9-9 and holds the phone to his ear.

“Hi, my friend just collapsed. He’s not been drinking, he has uh, cancer. A while. 4015 Highland Avenue. Keep him awake? Okay.” Phil hangs up the phone and focuses on keeping Dan’s eyes open, but the brunet isn’t making any sense and his eyes keep falling shut. 

It’s about four minutes, but it feels like a lifetime and a half before he hears sirens outside and for once they get louder and louder and don’t fade into the distance with a sarcastic comment from Dan. This time the paramedics show up at the front door of his childhood home and strap his best friend, boyfriend, housemate, business partner, fiancé, entire fucking world, to a gurney and put him in an ambulance. 

He rides in the back of the ambulance with the paramedics and his parents promise to come soon on their own, and it’s eight fucking fifteen in the morning and this shouldn’t be happening. 

This shouldn’t be happening.

He goes through the motions until he’s in the waiting room of a hospital, probably the same hospital he came to with Dan all those years ago, and there’s nothing left for him to do. He feels like shit, he can barely breathe and his nose is runny, and his best friend is fucking dying. 

“Phil Lester?” A voice calls from somewhere far away and it barely registers in Phil’s mind. 

“Yes?” Phil stands and shakes hands with a doctor he can’t even read the name of, because he forgot to put on his glasses or contacts because he just woke up because it’s eight thirty-eight in the morning. 

“We’ve managed to get Mr. Howell conscious but we had to do a tracheostomy. His right lung collapsed when he fell due to lack of blood flow to his brain, and there’s not much we can do at this point.” The doctor explains, but his words gargle and swim in Phil’s head. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Phil begs, his hands shaking so hard he feels like he fits in with the pill heads waiting around him. 

“Why don’t you come talk to him, he’s asked for you.” The doctor gives him that closed-mouthed smile that sends spikes of fear down Phil’s spine.

Phil follows him to the small room and Dan’s alone, on the bed. 

“Hi.” Phil says softly.

“Hi.” Dan breathes, the tube coming out of his throat and the one over his nose obscuring the soft features of his face. 

“I love you.” Phil sits on the bed and runs a hand through Dan’s hair. 

“I’m so tired.” Dan closes his eyes, “I’m so tired, Phil.” 

“Do you want me to call your parents?” 

“No, they- they are shit at goodbyes. They’ll like it this way.” Dan opens his eyes and it looks like a struggle. “Where are yours?”

“They’re coming.” Phil promises, taking Dan’s hand that isn’t attached to an IV.

“Good.” Dan closes his eyes, “Anyone else?” 

“No.”

“Good.” Dan repeats, “Thank you.” 

Phil fights the panic growing in his chest and holds Dan’s hand harder, “Please don’t go.”

“I can’t, I c-can’t stay here. This body doesn’t want me any more. It’ll be okay.” Dan smiles, soft and sweet. “I’ve had a good life.”

“You’re twenty-five, medicine can save you, you could live another ninety or a hundred years, they’ll save you. We can pay whatever it takes, I-“ Phil’s voice breaks.

“Phil.” Dan squeezes back, feebly. “Please. You have to listen to me right now, the last time you’ll ever have to listen to me.”

“I love you,” Phil whimpers.

“Please, don’t stop YouTube. You know all the passwords to my accounts, don’t delete them. Be happy, please. The light in your videos could save the world.” 

“It can’t save you.” 

“Not this time.” Dan closes his eyes again, “I love you.”

“I’ll wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.” Phil sobs, his hands trembling over Dan’s.

“And how very lucky I am to get to spend the rest of mine with you, you absolute dork. My dork. My Phil.” Dan blinks his eyes open and keeps smiling as tears gather in the dips of his eyes. 

“Please don’t- please. I-“ Phil’s face crumbles as Dan’s eyes close once again. He presses his lips to Dan’s briefly. 

“Phil,” Dan says, but it dissolves into a breath of air as his pulse flickers and fades. 

“Dan,” Phil whimpers, “Dan, no, Dan, no, no, Dan, Dan- nurse! Nurse!” 

The machine beeps once, twice, three times before flat lining and suddenly Phil is shoved to the wall. It’s a weird out-of-body experience as he watches Dan go through the recipient motions of a code. 

The nurses shock him once, twice, the loud shouts of “clear!” fill the air like smoke. Phil feels like he’s being strangled as the machine doesn’t re-start, doesn’t make a noise other than that god-awful squealing. He’s twenty-five, it’s eight in the morning, it’s Dan, it’s Dan, it’s Dan, it’s Dan, it’s- 

“Time of death, eight fifty-six am.” 

Silence. 

Silence. 

Silence.


	10. Phil

Silence.

The doctors leave as quickly as they arrived and Phil is left with a body on a bed with a sheet over his head. 

“Dan.” Phil whispers as he takes three careful steps towards the bed. He pulls back the sheet. 

Dan is free of wires, free of tubes. Even the hole in his throat is bandaged over. He looks peaceful, like he’s sleeping. He could be sleeping; he is still warm to the touch. Phil runs two fingers over Dan’s lips and then over his jaw line. 

This is the last time he will ever seen Dan.

He stares at Dan for ten minutes, stiff and numb, before a nurse comes into the room and tells him that his parents are here and asks if it’s okay if they take Dan’s body away. Phil nods numbly and gives Dan’s stiff hand one last squeeze before he’s walking from the room on feet he’s pretty sure no longer belong to him. 

His parents are sat on a bench in the hall and they stand when they see Phil.

“They told us he’s gone, I can’t believe-“ His mum starts to say, but his dad shushes her quickly and Phil nods blankly. 

“Do you need anything?” Phil’s dad asks, and Phil shakes his head.

“Want to come home with us?” Phil’s mum asks, and Phil shakes his head.

Without a word, Phil leaves. He’s running suddenly, feeling desperate. He knows the staff is staring at him but he’s half way to the door and he feels like he’s about to be sick. 

He makes it to the outside air and he’s running, feeling blind and reckless. He lets his feet carry him until the adrenaline coursing through his veins catches up with his lungs and he’s falling to his knees. He goes to Manchester Piccadilly Station and wants to fucking burn it to the ground, but instead gets on the next train to London. It’s expensive, but Phil doesn’t care. 

It feels so wrong to be going home alone. 

His heart pounds in his chest and on the two-hour journey home, he writes in the note app on his phone with trembling fingers. 

He takes a car from the train station to his building, but this time he asks to be dropped off of the right street instead of the one adjacent. Nothing matters.

“You okay, mate?” The driver asks, and Phil wants to yank the handle off the door. 

“No, thanks.” And then he’s slamming the door and running up the flights of stairs to his flat. 

He fights with the door and when it swings open it’s like walking into a morgue. Everything feels dead; what once seemed comforting and homey now seems horrible and taunting. 

He can’t control his body and he collapses on the floor, his mouth open. He doesn’t realise he’s screaming until his fingernails digging into his arms draws blood and he’s gasping for air. 

“Dan,” He gasps, the world spinning around him, “Dan,” 

He doesn’t care how loud he’s being. He hopes their neighbours hear him; he hopes everyone in London hears how fucking broken he is right now. 

He doesn’t want to be alone, but he doesn’t want to be with anyone else. Dan’s alive, Dan’s alive, this can’t fucking be happening. They have a life together, they have a channel together, they’re going to get married. This can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening. 

He has to arrange the funeral; he has to go to the funeral. He has to tell the Internet, he has to live the rest of his life without Dan. This can’t be happening. 

He makes it to Dan’s bed and falls to pieces as he pulls the duvet up to his chest and inhales the scent of Dan. It’s too much and it’s not enough, not enough right now. Phil sobs open-mouthed into the pillow and feels his chest heave sharply again and again. His phone keeps buzzing against his thigh and he doesn’t care who it is, he never will care again. He digs out the phone and throws it across the room, flinching when it shatters against the wall and stops buzzing. 

When it’s all too much and he’s screamed himself out, he falls into a fitful sleep.

Dan’s mum arranges the funeral, and Phil’s supposed to speak. Of course. 

It’s the coldest day of the year, a week before Christmas. The ground is too solid to dig into, but Dan was cremated. Phil finally brought him back to London in a metal tin two days prior. Everyone is in black suits, or dresses. Louise, Tyler, Dan’s parents, Adrian, Phil’s parents, Martyn and Cornelia, a few school friends Phil doesn’t recognize, and a handful of others are at the church.

Phil hates it. Dan hated religion; he thought it tore people apart. Dan hated funerals, and instrumental music. He would hate this.

A few people try and speak to him, but Phil works on holding himself together. He doesn’t really want to be here, he doesn’t see Dan in any part of this. 

Still, he ends up at the podium and he’s staring at his phone with its newly cracked screen with the words he wrote on the train. There’s no editing here, no jumpcuts to hide the moments when his throat closes up and he can barely speak. 

It’s just Phil, alone, in front of a church full of people who couldn’t have possibly loved Dan as much as Phil loved him. 

“Hi. Thank you for coming.” Phil begins, his voice thick, “As most of you know, Dan was my best friend. I was his best friend. We made a life together, with the two of us. And now that life is severed.” 

Silence falls over the church and Phil sees the women crying; all the men look solemn. Phil wants to scream. He locks his phone and ignores the words he wrote, those were not for these people.

“I don’t have much to say. I don’t think there are words for how painful it is to go home alone to a place I used to share with my favourite person. I can’t eat, without seeing him sitting across from me, I can’t brush my teeth without seeing his toothbrush there, I can’t-“ Phil stops, his voice catching and hanging on every word. 

“He was my other half, in business, in life, in love. I will never forget the impact he had on me, and the world. I miss you, Dan. I will miss you until the day I die.”

The funeral isn’t long; nobody else is brave enough to speak. When it’s over, they get into separate cars and go home to their living families. Phil goes home alone. 

On the train, Dan is beside him. When he cooks dinner, Dan is leaning on the counter, commenting on how much oregano Phil is using. When Phil sits in front of the TV, Dan is there too. He doesn’t try to steal the remote, for once, but that doesn’t stop him from commenting on how terrible The Apprentice is. 

When Phil tells the Internet what happened, Dan is on his bed, upside-down and laughing loudly at how many times Phil proofreads the post. When Phil cries, Dan wraps his long arms around his chest and whispers into his ear that everything is going to be okay.

When Phil falls asleep that night, Dan falls asleep beside him.

When Phil wakes up, he is alone.


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the end. Thank you everyone who's been following this story, I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a comment, if you feel like it!

Phil straightens his tie in the mirror and frowns at the way it insists on turning slightly to the right.

“Here,” Jesse steps over and adjusts it for him, choking him slightly in the process. “Now you look fit for a meeting.”

“I always look fit for a meeting.” Phil rolls his eyes but smiles, thanking her.

“Maybe so, but not one that may score you a prime-time radio show.” Jesse raises an eyebrow, “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

“If you say that again I’m leaving you.” Phil kisses the corner of her mouth, grabbing his space backpack.

“Phil, I’m serious. You can do this, okay?” Jesse stops him from leaving, “I know you think you can’t do it, not without him, but you can, I promise.”

Phil takes a deep breath and leaves with a light heart and the warm air of summer in his hair.

The radio station is exactly how they left it a year ago, the same people and the same row of mail slots in the front lobby of the building. Phil pauses, reading over the names and freezing when his eyes read Dan Howell.

“Stop it.” He whispers to himself, and keeps walking. He comforts himself by the fact that his name is also there, one box over.

They’ll meet with him in twenty minutes, Nick tells him the way someone tells a friend they’re running a bit late. It’s comforting to be back here again. Even alone, he feels like Dan is beside him, nervous but happily anticipating the future. 

Phil nabs a piece of paper from the desk behind him and takes a pen from his bag. Using his laptop as a surface, he begins to write.

 

_Dear Dan,_

_It’s been a year and a half since I’ve seen you. I think you’ll be happy to hear that our landlord has still deemed me a suitable tenant- I’ve not made too many new dents in the walls. I miss you, a lot. I don’t think that will ever change._

_I'm always surprised at how permanent everything feels and more so how temporary most things are. Sometimes I feel like I lived my entire life in the days we were together. For a long time, nothing felt right. I looked for you in everyone, I still do._

_It was so easy to exist, when we were parts of each other. I think I’m doing okay. I hope you are too. For weeks after you died I’d come home and find weird things had happened, like the couch was against the wrong wall or something. It had to have been me doing it, but a part of me hoped it was you. I think for a long time we were both haunting the place._

_Do you remember that nurse who you liked? We’re together now- she’s not you, but she’s a good cook and she’s also afraid of the dark. She misses you too._

_I won’t keep you any longer; I think they’re going to call for me soon. I’m trying to get back on the radio- don’t worry though, I haven’t given up YouTube. I’m almost to six million subscribers. Even in death, you still have more. I don't mind._

_I love you Dan, and I will for the rest of my life._

_Your best friend,_

_Phil_

 

 

 

 


End file.
